Fall Seven Times
by Ulquiorra9000
Summary: AU. Sequel to Across the Worlds. Mizuki's life became unexpectedly dull and routine once she helped vanquish Nihil and redeem Azrael. And without her powerful curse, what can she do to enforce the Planeswalker Code? Is there even a point? She'll have to answer those questions fast or face oblivion once a horribly familiar army begins to sink its claws into Kamigawa... On hiatus.
1. Chapter 1

**FALL SEVEN TIMES**

 **by Ulquiorra9000**

 **Chapter 1**

There was definitely a lesson in humility to lose your powers.

Kamigawa's warm spring sun eased itself lower and lower behind the distant, rusty-red Sokenzan mountains as a lone girl hiked across a well-worn dirt road back to town. She sighed and wiped her brow, her straw-sandaled feet kicking up loose dirt as she went, a goatskin pack strapped to her back, an empty bamboo water carrier held loosely in her right hand. She had her black hair tied into a simple ponytail, her narrow eyes fixed on the welcome sight of Juka-no-Nadachi drawing nearer.

Mizuki knew deep down that she was supposed to _enjoy_ the simple life. But it wasn't that easy. How could she just go back to how things once were?

She remembered it all: planeswalking onto war-torn Bant to look for advances in healing magic, meeting a blond battlemage boy, slaying the atrocious Haijin-no-Imari to cleanse her curse... and Azrael, Veldor, Zoira, everyone... the four wayward shards of the Sphaera Vitae, the hellish cyborg Nihil, with his skull-head and oil blood...

Mizuki tightened her grip on her bamboo water carrier. _Knock it the hell out. It's all over. No more Sphaera, no crazy adventures on Lorwyn and Innistrad and whatever, no race against time... forget all that._

She still couldn't.

She was too afraid. Scared to assume her mantle of responsibility and uphold the Planeswalker Code. Veldor and Zoira had worked hard to bring Mizuki and Morrel into the Code, but Veldor was dead (thanks to that damned Nihil), and Mizuki hadn't heard from Zoira in a while, not since the horrible Eldrazi had finally been wiped out on Zendikar.

Seriously, how much more evil crap could there be? Not much, Mizuki hoped. Her curse was gone... but with it, her fantastic power. It had been the price to pay for sure. No more could her left arm tear up monsters with claws, or fire devastating mana beams, or _anything_.

What was Mizuki now? A wanderer? Would she find a nice job somewhere, settle down, have a family?

And what about Morrel? Her heart warmed at the thought of him, his loyalty, his encouraging smile... would it count as cheating on him if she found a new fellow back home on Kamigawa? Would she even be tempted to try?

The stupid future was too foggy!

"Sure could use your oh-so-great wisdom now, Veldor," Mizuki said aloud, her irritation coloring the air. "You'd know what to say, right? Something like..." She deepened her voice. "'Must stay the course, Mizuki. Evil never rests. Why should we? Planeswalker Code very clear. Vow is not one easily broken. Find the strength necessary to uphold it.'"

She actually laughed from how spot-on her imitation wound up being. Some people never changed.

"What the hell's a Planeswalker Code?" a new voice asked.

Mizuki jumped and skidded to a stop. From a parallel road came an ox-drawn cart with a lone salesman on it, the wagon's back loaded with goods. The man wore a simple red robe and conical straw hat held in place with a leather strap.

"Oh. Uh..." Mizuki put on what was probably a very unconvincing smile. "Just repeating what some... wandering monks... told me. Free lecture."

"The monks? Weirdos think they know everything," the salesman said gruffly, baring his teeth. "Sittin' all day with their incense burners while fellas like me bust their humps doin' real work!"

Mizuki shrugged. Once, she would have agreed with him. But after fighting alongside a Bant boy... "We've all got our own crap to do in life."

"Whatever," the salesman said. "You headin' to Juka-no-Nadachi? That's where I'm headed."

"Me, too."

"I can give ya a ride, if ya like," the man offered. "I'm ahead of schedule, anyway."

Mizuki brightened. "Thaniks a bundle. I'm beat." She walked over to climb onto a free spot on the cart. The ox snorted and grunted, clearly bored.

A loud rustle drew everyone's attention.

"What's that?" the salesman asked sharply.

"A rabbit or somethin'," Mizuki said casually. "Whatsa matter? Scared of a bunny?"

But bunnies didn't click and whirr like whatever was in the grass was doing.

The ox made a low sound and pawed at the dirt with its hard hooves. "Let's get outta here," the salesman said tightly. "We'll be safe once we're in Juka-no-Nadachi's walls. Let the town guard deal with whatever's -"

The clicking grew to a threatening hiss, and Mizuki heard the rattle of delicate metal on metal.

"Shit!" Mizuki leaped out of the just in time. From the dry grass sprang something long and shiny, like a snake. But it was no snake; it thudded into the cart's packed goods and skittered around on insectoid legs, glaring at the two humans with a single yellow eye. An eye with an unnatural dark pupil, an eye with a soul of metal and oil.

Two scythe-like arms slashed through the air.

The salesman's head came clean off in a wet spray of red.

 _No no NO!_ Mizuki drew her weapon from her backpack: a wakizashi sword in a blue, polished sheath. In an instant, Mizuki had the weapon out and brought it down in a well-practiced arc.

The blade grated against the centipede-like creature's chrome chitin, and it snarled and wriggled out of the way. Its scythe-arms carved through the air, eager to take Mizuki's head as well.

Adrenaline blasted through Mizuki's body as she kicked off the cart's edge, vaulting through the air. The confused artifact creature drew back, clicking as though berating itself for missing its target. At the same time, Mizuki landed in a graceful crouch and, despite her revulsion, seized its tail.

"You're not getting away _this_ time." Mizuki jabbed the tip of her wakizashi into the creature's head, wedging it between two chrome plates. Black, thick oil bled from the wound and the creature thrashed and squealed until Mizuki's blade severed the head. The body went limp.

Mizuki panted for breath, leaning back against a bag of grain, her mind desperate to reject what she was seeing. That chrome... the oil... that soulless eye...

She had seen all that before. In Nihil.

 _Shit._

Was this a scout? No doubt. Mizuki hopped off the cart, trying not to look at the salesman's headless body, and searched the surrounding grassland, wakizashi held at the ready. She found nothing but a thin trail of oil marking where the scout creature had slithered. She tested the oil on two fingers, rubbing it between the fingertips. She carefully sniffed it.

It smelled like metal and malice.

Mizuki threw back her head and groaned. She wanted her simple life to be over, and now it was.

One thing left to do.

She had to save her home. No one else on Kamigawa would know what they were dealing with!

Sheathing her wakizashi, her hunger and fatigue forgotten, Mizuki drew up her natural green-black mana (she had never noticed it under Haijin-no-Imari's curse) and conjured a planeswalking gate. She stepped through.

A gold-capped, marble Selesnya guild temple towered over Mizuki and the countless Ravnicans bustling past her on the street. An indrik beast bleated as it lumbered along, and a pair of vedalken wizards argued loudly near the street intersection, gesturing with their long, blue hands.

Mizuki ignored all this as she stomped into the Selesnya temple. Someone she knew often prayed here to soothe his soul, and she somtimes joined him. But not _this_ time!

Green and white-robed elves and humans glared at Mizuki as she stomped noisily across the polished floor and past large vases of well-maintained fruit trees and flowers. She didn't stop until she stood right behind a certain man who was kneeled in prayer. A shaft of afternoon sunlight washed over him from a nearby window.

"Hey, it's me. Got a minute?" Mizuki asked, fists clenched at her sides.

The man tensed, then relaxed. He got up slowly and turned to face Mizuki, wearing studded leather armor and boots, plus a blue cape. His face was framed by his long locks of red hair.

"Mizuki, I hope there's a very good reason that you're barging in on me like this," he said warily.

"Yeah, there sure is," Mizuki said, hands on her hips. "I've got a big problem back home. I'm looking for help anywhere I can get it." She slowly smiled. "Why don't we take a walk outside and talk about it? C'mon, Azrael, just give me five minutes to make my case..."


	2. Chapter 2

**FALL SEVEN TIMES**

 **by Ulquiorra9000**

 **Chapter 2**

Mizuki didn't say a word until she and Azrael were back out in the open and joined the thronging crowds on the wide sidewalks. Overhead, a pair of Azorius guild hussars swooped past on their griffins, and further along, two odd-looking vedalken wizards in blue-green robes preached about the "future of life's progress" while handing out pamphlets. Street vendors called out the prices of their wares, from dried meats to fruit to leather goods to jewelry.

So much noise. So many people unaware of what _else_ was out there.

It was a burden, being a planeswalker.

But Mizuki would be damned if that stopped her!

"So, uh... do I find you well?" Mizuki asked, putting on her best polite voice.

Azrael drew in a deep breath through his nose and nodded slowly. "I suppose. It'll take some time for me to find complete inner calm, but..." He made a watery smile. "Yes, I'm doing well. Thank you."

"Great. So am I," Mizuki said, then made a face. "Okay, no. I'm not great, actually. I've got a problem, y'see, and -"

"Mizuki," Azrael said sharply as a horse-drawn wagon rolled past, "I've already told you that I'm not an inter-planar vigilante. I'm not a fighter like... like Rohkan was. I'm an artificer, and right now, I -"

"Hey, you fought with me against Nihil," Mizuki insisted, her heart rate speeding up. She swallowed. "You can kick ass! And for all the right reasons, too. We couldn't have killed Nihil without your help back on Dominaria."

Azrael tensed, then sighed. "I know what I did. Could I just let Nihil steal my Sphaera Vitae for his masters? Of course not. But now, that's all over. You don't need _me_ to remind you of that. I'm on a different world, with a different purpose."

Mizuki fell silent, humbled. She knew what he was talking about. After losing his Sphaera Vitae, and therefore his last link to his nation's people and his beloved sister, Azrael had confined himself here to Ravnica to heal. He'd finally accepted that he'd never bring back the dead, but realizing that had taken a toll.

Mizuki knew what it did to you to lose everyone. She could still see Haijin-no-Imari and her ogre warriors massacring her friends and family last year...

 _The Planeswalker Code._

Mizuki could also remember Veldor's stern tone about such things. What would he think if he saw Mizuki and Azrael crying on each other's shoulders? He'd whip them into shape, Esper style!

Fine.

Mizuki took a deep breath. "I didn't want to just dump this next bit of news on you, but it's important. You gotta hear it."

Azrael stopped at an intersection and waited for the trade wagons and mounted beasts to clear the way to cross. Overhead, a temple's bell tolled, and an Orzhov messenger hawk took flight with a data capsule in its beak.

Mizuki waited for Azrael to say something. He didn't.

"I saw a scout creature back home on Kamigawa," Mizuki said in a rush. "Azrael, it was the same kind of creature Nihil was! Same metal, same oil, same... evil. There's bound to be more. If we don't do something now, it could get a hell of a lot worse."

The street cleared and the crowds around Mizuki started crossing, but Azrael stood there, his unreadable brown eyes locked on Mizuki. "The same... what?"

In a flash, Azrael took hold of Mizuki's shoulders and dragged her into an alley's mouth. "What did you say? Are you sure?" he asked in a strained whisper, his eyes suddenly _very_ readable. With horror.

"Hey, let go!" Mizuki wrenched herself free and took a step back, scowling. "Yeah, I know what I saw, Azrael. What did Nihil call his allies? Fai-rexins?"

Azrael was white as a sheet, his eyes staring past Mizuki. "The Phyrexians." He slowly looked down, staring at his open hands as though expecting a solution to this problem to materialize in his palms. "The same... the very same..."

Mizuki took a few steps forward and gently lowered Azrael's hands. "The ones who wiped out your homeland, right?"

Azrael swallowed and nodded. "They're back. They'll never stop until they get what they want, will they?"

He looked up at Mizuki, his eyes sparking with fire. "I'm sorry I was rough with you. But... if you're certain on what you saw..."

Mizuki nodded back. "Damn straight. I've never seen anything else like it. It was just suddenly _there_ , as I was walkin' back to Juka-no-Nadachi." Her stomach went cold. "Oh no... what if another scout decides to attack the town? And more like it?"

Azrael drew himself to his full height, the color back in his face. "Did you once say something about a Planeswalker Code?"

"It was mostly Veldor and Zoira, but yeah," Mizuki said tentatively.

"I sympathize with the concept. I... I cannot rest if the Phyrexians are about to vanquish someone else's way of life," Azrael declared, his voice growing louder. "I _won't_!"

Mizuki suddenly beamed. "So, I can count on your help, then?"

"You can." Azrael took a few steps deeper into the alleyway, kicking aside a loose trash can that was in his way. A cat yowled angrily and scampered off. "Take me to Kamigawa. Where you found the Phyrexian scout."

"Well, um..." Mizuki faltered. "Just in case we get in over our heads, I want one more person on the job first."

Azrael raised his eyebrows. "Who?"

"You already know her. C'mon." Mizuki fired up her planeswalking gate and prepared to step in.

Azrael conjured his own blue-black gate. "You know, Mizuki..." he commented.

"Huh? What?"

Azrael managed a smile. "What a superb young woman you turned out to be."

Mizuki went red. "Hey, I've already got a boyfriend..."

"Indeed you do." Azrael stepped into his planeswalking gate and vanished.

Rolling her eyes, Mizuki stepped into hers and joined Azrael in the Blind Eternities. Was this what it was like to have a doting uncle or something?

Fun times.

*o*o*o*o*

Mizuki did _not_ expect grid-like distortions everywhere, or chalky dust, when she stepped out of her planeswalking gate.

"Oh, crap!" Mizuki coughed and spluttered, her eyes watering on the horrible dust choking the air. Next to her, Azrael waved his arm in a wide arc, and a bubble of blue mana enveloped the both of them, filtering the air through its thin membrane.

"What _is_ this?" Azrael hissed, his intense brown eyes taking in the dead world around him.

"Zoira told me that Zendikar was bein' attacked by Eldrazi," Mizuki said, "but this is nuts. I thought the war was already won."

"Then this must be the aftermath. There's no mistaking it," Azrael said grimly. His red hair was being tossed around by the mana of his aura spell. "This dead silence, the despair... do you know where to find anyone?"

Mizuki set off, her straw sandals crunching on the exhausted dirt underfoot. "This is supposed to be the Turntimber forest on the Ondu continent, but damn... there's not a tree in sight!"

"Watch my back," Azreal said tightly, "and I'll watch yours. Take the lead."

Mizuki carefully advanced through the hellish landscape, her wakizashi drawn and held tightly in her hands, poised for combat. She felt her breaths come in rapid gasps and she forced herself to relax a bit. _Don't wind yourself too tight. You've been in a few scraps before!_

More chalky dust drifted through the air like snow as Mizuki led Azrael through what was once familiar terrain. Nothing looked familiar anymore, just dead. Mizuki strained her eyes and ears for anything that could guide her, and it wasn't until she heard chattering humanoid voices that she broke into an eager dash, Azrael right behind her.

A handful of massive, half-dried trees towered over the landscape, and at their tangled roots stood a collection of tents, campfires, and wagons. Mizuki broke into a run to join them, her wakizashi held casually in her left hand. "Hey! Hello?" she called out.

Two burly elves blocked Mizuki's path, a man and a woman, both with their own swords drawn. "Stop! Who're you?" the man demanded. He had green face paint on, giving him a wild look.

Mizuki slowed and came to a stop before the elves. "Oh, relax. I'm a friend of Zoira's. Is she here? I bet she is..."

"What do you want with her?" the woman demanded. "Sheath your sword, little girl!"

"I -" Mizuki hastily sheathed her wakizashi and stuffed it back in her travel pack. "Sorry. But seriously, where's Zoira?"

"Here, since you asked," came a familiar woman's voice.

Tall, lithe, and rather easy on the eyes, Zoira joined the small party from the larger camp. She had her phoenix perched on her right shoulder, and it cawed a hello to Mizuki and Azrael.

"Zoira," Azrael said kindly, bowing his head. "A pleasure."

"Mizuki. Azrael. I had no idea..." Zoira gestured for the two burly elves to ease off. "I never thought I'd see you both here."

Mizuki waved from inside Azrael's air filter bubble. "Nice to see ya again, Zoira." Her face fell. "Did the Eldrazi really do all this?"

Zoira nodded grimly and her phoenix cooed sadly. "A union of planeswalkers helped destroy the titans Ulamog and Kozilek. I did what I could to keep my tribe alive and fight the Eldrazi, but there's so few of us left. Even with bands of kor and humans aiding us, it's tough picking up the pieces."

Azrael bowed his head again. "I've always admired your strength of spirit, Zoira."

"Thanks." The elf lady managed a smile. "I need it now more than ever. Zendikar nearly died at the titans' hands. Well, except the biggest. Emrakul. No one knows where it is. We're all on alert for a surprise emegence, like what Kozilek did."

Mizuki stepped forward. "Zoira... it looks to me like this war just ended, but there's another one brewin'."

Zoira blinked. "I... what?"

"Back home, on Kamigawa," Mizuki told her, locking eyes with the tall elf. "I found and killed a scout creature. Judgin' from its metal body, its oil and cold feel... it was the same as Nihil. A Phyrexian agent. I'm _sure_ of it."

"Oh..." Zoira clapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes downcast. The two other elves looked at her in confusion, and Zoira waved them off again.

"We've gotta do something," Mizuki insisted. "Before it's too late! It was a scout today... what's it going to be tomorrow?"

Zoira lowered her hand. "Mizuki... Azrael... I'm so sorry. Nihil was... you know. But I have a duty here, too! I'm barely keeping everything together as it is."

Mizuki recoiled. "What?! Hey! What about the Planeswalker Code, and -"

"I know the Code," Zoira said sternly, "and right now, it's _my_ world that needs its protection!"

"And mine does too!" Mizuki snapped, shoving her face in Zoira's. "I risked my life so many times to stop Azrael's scheme and fight Nihil with you, and now you -"

The burly elf woman pounced and pinned Mizuki to the hard, cool ground. "Shut up, child!" she roared. She pinned Mizuki's wrists down in her hands. "Zoira is the only reason we're still alive. Don't you talk to her like that!"

"Get... off!" Mizuki snarled and squirmed under the elf woman's weight, but she couldn't get free. Her feet scuffed uselessly against the dead ground.

 _My sword!_ Mizuki tried to get her right hand free to draw it. No good. _Damn it!_

The weight suddenly lifted as Azrael hoisted the elf woman into the air in one hand, his fingers clamped on her jacket collar. Blue-black mana hummed on his arm, the light reflecting in his eyes.

"Stop! Everyone stop!" Zoira shouted. She stepped forward, her phoenix poised for flight.

Reluctantly, Azrael set the elf woman down and powered down his mana. He offered a hand and helped Mizuki up.

Zoira sighed and looked at everyone in turn. "There's been enough fighting as it is! Everyone needs to stay calm."

"This human tried to take you away," the elf woman growled, pointing at Mizuki.

"And to where?" the elf man asked sharply. "What is Kamigawa?"

Zoira pointed to the camp. "It's nothing, okay? Just find another spot to stand guard against any more drone attacks."

The two elves marched off.

"Even with two Eldrazi titans dead, we still have to mop up their broods," Zoira admitted. "Most of them are scattered and relatively easy to deal with, but we're exhausted. Can't take any chances. A bunch of Kozilek drones tried to overtake us three days ago. Lost six good warriors stopping them."

Mizuki ran a hand over her face. "I... I'm sorry I upset you. But Zoira, it's not too late to save Kamigawa. I'm tryin' not to be selfish here. Really. But if we don't do somethin', another world will fall." She held a hand over her heart. "The plane is still recovering from the Kami War. It's vulnerable to the Phyrexians. Maybe that's _why_ they're moving in. Easy prey."

"It's... possible," Zoira said slowly. She turned to Azrael. "Nihil led his Phyrexian army to your home nation to steal its advanced knowledge of artifice. We know that for sure. But what do the Phyrexians want with Kamigawa?"

Azrael shook his head. "I've visited Kamigawa once. It's far away from New Phyrexia, the plane once known as Mirrodin. I can't see any motive to invade."

Mizuki shrugged. "We can look into it together, guys. Zoira, you're good at tracking and stuff, right? Since you're an elf?"

"Sure I am," Zoira said carefully. "But my home plane needs me, Mizuki. Please... you're both quite capable. If you find out what the Phyrexians are doing on Kamigawa, and you can find a way where I can help, I'll consider making the trip."

She stepped forward and wrapped Mizuki in a sudden hug. "I'm sorry, my dearest Mizuki, that you got dragged back into such danger. I'm not refusing my help out of spite. I trust you to find the right solution to this."

Mizuki groaned. "Zoira, not in front of Azrael! C'mon!"

But she actually did kind of like it.

Zoira let Mizuki go, hands on her hips. "And hey..." Zoira added. "Maybe there's other people, planeswalkers or Kamigawa natives, who'd love to help you! Why not expand the Planeswalker Code?"

Azrael gently rested his hands on Mizuki's shoulders. "She has a point, Mizuki. We should be going. We have a lot to do, and Zoira's own world needs her."

Mizuki sighed again and nodded. "Yeah, I get it. Got any ideas, Azrael?"

The tall redhead led Mizuki away and summoned his blue-black planeswalking gate again. He shut off his air filter spell. "Have you ever been to Fiora before, Mizuki?"

"Uh... no."

Azrael grinned. "Summon your planeswalking gate and follow me carefully. We're going to the High City of Paliano. It is _not_ a place where I advise getting lost."

Mizuki felt a chill as she conjured her green-black planeswalking gate and stepped into it. Just what was Azrael getting her into?

Only one way to find out.


	3. Chapter 3

**FALL SEVEN TIMES**

 **by Ulquiorra9000**

 **Chapter 3**

"Hey... are you sure we're not still on Ravnica?"

Mizuki stopped and stared as her planeswalking gate vanished behind her. Around her loomed white-stone buildings with red-tiled roofs and fancy gardens in the balconies, plus high-spired temples and huge apartment complexes. Thick crowds of chattering people bustled up and down the street as horse-drawn wagons marched in a procession, and silver, fancy golems lumbered after their masters like obedient dogs. A warm evening sun painted the whole scene a gentle orange-gold tone, and a dry breeze picked up, toying with Mizuki's hair.

"Ravnica?" Azrael joined Mizuki as his own blue-black gate vanished. He had a wry grin as he shook his head. "Walk with me, Mizuki. This is Paliano, the High City. You'll have to see it to believe it."

 _But it looks so similar..._ Shrugging, Mizuki set off with Azrael into the foreign city.

Thick silver clouds drifted overhead as Azrael led Mizuki around a left turn and up a wide, cobblestone ramp with stone railings. The long walkway overlooked the sprawling, fenced-off gardens and ponds of a huge manor house, and white geese floated in the lily pad ponds as gardeners in green tunics trimmed the hedges.

"I don't get it," Mizuki admitted, shading her eyes from the evening sun. "This place looks fine to me. What's the big deal?"

Azrael pointed at the opulent manor house. "See the guards?"

Mizuki saw them: humans and a few burly elves in fancy silver armor, all with spears in hand. Their helmets had feathered wings and jewels on them. "Uh, so?" _How does this help us against the Phyrexians?_

"Those guards won't ask you what you're doing on Lord Calzotto's private estate if you sneak in. They'll send you back home in tiny pieces without saying a word," Azrael told her. "It's their right. But Lord Calzotto is powerful for more than that; he has all kinds of connections across Paliano and the towns of Fiora, and one word from him can ruin careers, make people disappear, and topple whole merchant guilds. Many pray that he doesn't exercise that power. And there's others like him all over the place."

Mizuki tilted her head as she contemplated Lord Calzotto's mansion. The place sure was beautiful... but it hid gruesome power under the shiny exterior. There were some tycoons and lords on Kamigawa like that, too. Mizuki always made a point to _avoid_ them and their vile ways.

Which made Azreal's next statement all the more disagreeable.

"We're going to pay a friendly visit," Azrael said casually.

Mizuki halted, hands on her hips. "I'm _sorry_?" She looked up and fixed her eyes on Azrael's. "Is that your idea of a prank?"

"You deserve to know how... business... works around here," Azrael admitted. "Paliano is a place where wealth in coins, loyalty, favors, weapons, and magic are like food and water. No one is happy where they are; there's always the next bloody step up the social ladder."

He swept his arm to encompass the deceptively charming city. "Mizuki, assault and murder aren't illegal here. Even the king himself is already dead."

Mizuki took a step back, gripping the smooth stone railing for support. "Wh-what?"

Azrael smiled. "His spirit was kept intact so he could keep his rule. But all this was the machinations of... others. I won't bore you with the finer details. Just know that you'll be fine if you stay with me."

"By the gods." Mizuki huffed. "Can't you take me anywhere nice?"

Azrael merely kept up that smug smile and led Mizuki along a series of pathways, not stopping until he reached a pair of enchanted wrought-iron gates. Beyond lay a brick path across Lord Calzotto's ground and to the mansion.

Two elf guards convened on Azrael, their armor clanking as they moved.

"Business?" one asked.

"I'd like a visit to Lord Calzotto's armory," Azrael said crisply. "I need equipment for a little quest of ours."

"You and your mouth," the other guard grunted. "Every time you show up here, Azrael, I have to -"

"Or did Lord Calzotto forget what I did for him last time I was here?" Azrael cut in. "It would have been _such_ a bother if that spy had gotten away and returned to his guild with the Lord's secrets..."

"Keep your damned voice down!" the first guard snapped, but there wasn't anyone else around. The breeze rustled the ivy that grew on the iron-wrought fence.

Mizuki wished that she was taller; Azrael and the other guards towered over her. "May we -" she started.

"Who are you, eh, girly?" the second guard asked, narrowing his eyes at Mizuki. "Azrael, did you bring your daughter into this? How bold."

"Wh-what the -" Mizuki spluttered. "I'm not his..."

Azrael smiled politely and clapped a hand on Mizuki's shoulder. "All humans look the same to you, don't they?"

"Sure they do," the second elf guard said.

"No, no. This is Mizuki, a friend," Azrael explained. "A capable rogue and infiltrator. Not that she'd bring those skills to bear against Lord Calzotto. In fact, our quest is for her benefit."

The first guard leaned over to glare at Mizuki from under his helmet. "You'd better watch your step, and your mouth, around Lord Calzotto," he warned her. "You hear me?"

Mizuki made a noise like a mouse and nodded hastily as the armored elf loomed over her.

"You've got one hour, Azrael." The second guard rapped his steel-encased knuckles on the gate's lock, and the lock's white-blue enchantment retracted like flowing water. The iron-wrought gate swung inwards.

Mizuki kept her mouth firmly shut until Azrael brought her into the mansion's huge reception hall and to Lord Calzotto himself.

"Azrael," the middle-aged man boomed, spreading his arms wide. "Back so soon, old friend?"

"Not without good reason, I assure you," Azarel told him, and he knelt on one knee, motioning for Mizuki to do the same.

"So... you want to borrow _my_ high-end equipment for your little adventure?" Calzotto said, suddenly gruff. "This will cost you in at least six different ways, Azrael."

Mizuki opened her mouth to voice a question and caught herself in time. How the hell did Lord Calzotto already know about her mission?! Then she saw a brass-colored contraption fixed on the man's left ear, pulsing with blue mana.

 _Whoa. Can he hear everything his guards say? That's really... slick!_

The advanced artifact looked out-of-place on the lord, though. He was pretty wide and had a decent pot belly that strained his purple robes and white cloak. His tri-corn hat and jewelry, combined with the robes, made him look like a... well, Mizuki didn't even know! What was up with Fiora's fashion scene, anyway?

Lord Calzotto himself had a round face and graying hair at his temples, and a stern set of eyes under thin eyebrows. Those eyes fixed on Mizuki. "So, this is your quest mate, Azrael? This peasant?"

Mizuki was aware that her button-up sleeveless shirt, knee-length, skintight pants, and straw sandals hardly made a good impression. But she was no daimyo's daughter!

"She is capable, as I'm sure you already heard from earlier," Azrael said calmly. "Now, if we could..."

"Not so fast." Lord Calzotto held up a pudgy hand. "While you were away, some recent developments changed the terms of our partnership..."

Mizuki's head spun at the web of trade agreements, secret deals, bribes, and plotted assassinations that Lord Calzotto and Azrael argued about. She stood slightly behind Azrael, hoping to vanish from the lord's attention. She didn't want that crap aimed her way!

"... fine, then. Perhaps a fine fire-sword, or an absorption shield? I have many models," Lord Calzotto finally said. "I suppose I could spare you one or two of those..."

"Excellent," Azrael said, rubbing his hands together. "Mizuki, please don't touch anything on the way there. All right?"

"Not like I was gonna." Mizuki pouted. She wasn't a child! Though she saw the man's point. All kinds of expensive-looking paintings, vases, and other art were everywhere in the gilded entrance hall.

Lord Calzotto turned to lead his guests to the promised armory.

His head came clean off in a spray of blood.

Where Lord Calzotto's rotund body lay, a single woman stood.

*o*o*o*o*

Radiah Albazan tried to keep the glee off her face. She couldn't.

In the shadow of Lumengrid Tower, the priestess stood on a twisted metal platform overlooking the Progress Engine's finest creation: a new model of inter-planar portal technology. One hundred feet wide, the coppery-silver ring hummed and crackled with white-blue mana, the energy swirling toward the center like water in a drain. It silently beckoned.

Just over thirty years old, Radiah looked the same as she had during her life as an Auriok: light skin, bone-white hair, and intense dark eyes. She wore not the typical porcelain plating of the Machine Orthodoxy's priest class, but instead, a black leather ensemble better suited to rogues and assassins on other planes. She had once been known for her beauty, and it still showed... though her real face under the flesh disguise would frighten anyone not among the Machine Orthodoxy.

Not like it mattered. True beauty came from being _compleat._

"The portal's at full power," Radiah announced to the gathered blue Phyrexians that stood assembled on loading platforms just over the flat portal. "When you step through... just remember your mission. Follow my lead, and we can't fail. Got it?"

The Phyrexians all screeched, clicked, grunted, or hissed the affirmative. They were a motley bunch; some were the cyborg golems of the Progress Engine's administrative class, while others were _compleat_ Neurok warriors or rogues. There were also mindless ornithopters in the crew, backed up by _compleat_ drakes. Everyone had the proper chrome augmentations, oil tubing, and blue mana of the Progress Engine.

Radiah's fellow Machine Orthodoxy priests would come later. For now, Jin-Gitaxias needed to prove his minions' worth to the blue-white partnership that made this enterprise possible.

 _No, the real thanks are due to me,_ Radiah reflected as the portal's energy tossed her hair. Like Nihil before her, she'd been an Auriok born with the planeswalker Spark. But unlike Jin-Gitaxias's skull-headed thug, Radiah had bothered to properly _explore_ the Multiverse, and her travels had located the perfect place for conquest. And the first wave of Gitaxian probes had found all the strategic locations for assault. Excellent.

Radiah raised an arm, then clenched her leather-gloved hand in a fist as the go signal.

Blue Phyrexians of all shapes and temperaments leaped off the platforms one at a time, vanishing into the portal with puffs of mana.

Radiah waited to go last. She took a deep breath and rocked on her heels like a diver, then took the plunge into the mana waters, so to speak.

Kamigawa was waiting.


	4. Chapter 4

**FALL SEVEN TIMES**

 **by Ulquiorra9000**

 **Chapter 4**

Lord Calzotto's body had barely hit the floor when the newcomer looked up at Mizuki and Azrael.

"Are you with him?" she demanded.

"Call it a convenient partnership," Azrael said carefully. "Not all his enemies are mine. That in mind, who are _you_?"

The woman tossed her dark hair. "Never mind my name. Lord Calzotto here..." She nudged his body with a booted foot. "... went too far this time. When you push too hard, others push back. That old fool."

She was probably in her mid-twenties, with jaw-length dark hair and an angular face. She wore a leather vest and blue undershirt whose sleeves ran to her knuckles, the perfect place to hide weapons. More weapons and items were clasped to her utility belt, and at the moment, she had a gold knife in her left hand, partly hidden under her long sleeve.

"You were interrupting," Azrael said, taking a step closer.

"I don't have to do this on Lord Calzotto's schedule, or yours," the woman bit back. She twirled the gold knife in her hand as a warning.

"The guards... they would have warned him of your intrusion," Azrael said sharply. "His earpiece picks up everything they - wait. You actually snuck past _everyone_ , didn't you?"

The woman smiled coyly. "That I did. But now my friends are going to take care of the guards anyway, now that Lord Calzotto's going cold."

"I approached him for assistance on my friend's quest," Azrael said doggedly, gesturing to Mizuki with an open hand. "And you'd deny that to her? Do us a courtesy and step aside. I have need of Lord Calzotto's -"

"Forget it!" The woman tensed as though to spring. "My allies are already all over this mansion to secure it, like I told you earlier. Get out of here while you still can."

Mizuki wished that she could draw her wakizashi faster. Something in that woman's tone didn't sit well with her...

"Then watch me," Azrael said, taking another step closer. "I need to get into Lord Calzotto's armory for a few items. I'll claim them for my own, if that makes you happier. They won't be used in any fashion that could upset you."

The woman held her knife at the ready. "No deal. His ill-gotten gains are all forfeit! This mansion is gonna get picked clean. Get out _now_."

Mizuki tugged on Azrael's arm. "Maybe someone else can help us, Azrael. C'mon..."

Azrael shook his head. "I don't have enough pull with the other aristocrats," he muttered to Mizuki. "And besides, Lord Calzotto was something of a friend. I'll buy you a few seconds. Get ready..."

Mizuki felt a thrill of adrenaline.

Azrael manifested his intense blue-black mana aura and sprang.

Shattered tile shards blasted into the air as Azrael threw a heavy punch that the assassin woman dodged, his knuckles instead slamming into the polished floor. Almost as fast, Azrael crouched and swung out a roundhouse kick that whistled through the air.

The assassin vaulted over the kick and delivered a counter-kick that connected with Azrael's head. The red-head was sent crumpling, and the assassin prepared to bring her knife down on him.

"No!" Mizuki had her wakizashi out and ready by the time the assassin brought her knife down. The blade intercepted the assassin's knife and knocked it aside, and with a flourish, Mizuki swung for the assassin's neck.

Pain blasted in Mizuki's throat as the assassin wove her way around Mizuki's attack and punched her neck. Mizuki fell to her knees, gasping for breath, dropping her sword to clutch her throat. Her head swam.

A second later, Mizuki dimly felt the assassin's booted toes crash into the side of her head, and she felt herself sprawl just like Azrael. Through her pain-dimmed vision, Mizuki saw the assassin run deeper into Lord Calzotto's sunlit entrance hall and around a corner.

At the same time, more assassins emerged from various doors.

 _Are... all the guards already dead? So fast?_ Mizuki groaned and got to her feet, picking up her sword. She bared her teeth. "Azrael!"

The red-head was already on his feet, blue-black mana thrumming around him. "Help me take out the minions. We can't let anyone steal Lord Calzotto's possessions!"

At least a dozen assassins, all dressed like their leader, closed in on Azrael and Mizuki, knives and short swords drawn. But none seemed to have mana auras.

Good.

The assassins silently converged on the two planeswalkers and unleashed their combined fury.

While Azrael held off a few assassins nearby, Mizuki ducked and weaved her way through furious blades and kicked one assassin's knee with all her strength. Though small, Mizuki knew where the human body was vulnerable, and sure enough, the assassin cried out and fell to his knees, dropping his blade. Mizuki's wakizashi drew a deep cut across his chest, and the assassin was thrown onto his back. Blood seeped into his uniform.

Two more assassins moved in. They threw lightning-fast jabs in a well-disciplined pattern, and Mizuki grunted in pain as a few blows landed. Her head and neck ached horribly, her legs wobbling under her. _Focus!_

An assassin returned the favor and swept his leg out, blasting Mizuki's right leg out from under her. But instead of crumpling, Mizuki rolled into her fall's momentum and sprang back up on the assassin's exposed flank. She jabbed a fist to stun the man's knife arm, then raised her wakizashi to slice him apart.

Too slow; the assassin whirled around and swung his fist in a hasty blow that knocked Mizuki's head to the side. Then the other assassin delivered a kick that finally sent Mizuki sprawling.

 _Damn it!_ Mizuki felt her wakizashi fly out of her hand and saw it clatter to the tiled floor out of reach. Meanwhile, the two assassins loomed over her, leering at her.

Just before they could strike, Azrael came crashing in. Mizuki watched in glee as he blasted an assassin aside with a mana-infused punch, and then the man sank a terrific blow in an assassin's stomach and shoved him right into his ally. Both assassins stumbled back, all tangled up.

Despite her aching body, Mizuki sprang to her feet again and scooped up her wakizashi. She gouged open one assassin's chest, then impaled the other in the gut with a furious shout. Both men collapsed in a spreading red pool.

Azrael whirled like a dervish in a twisting display of blue-black mana, and he sent three more assassins sprawling, their faces bruised or arms broken, all crying out in agony. The few remaining assassins broke ranks and fled, expertly vaulting up the walls and retreating through open doors on the second level.

Mizuki wiped her brow. "Nice one."

Azrael nodded tightly. "Come on!"

He sprinted through Lord Calzotto's mansion with Mizuki taking up the rear, and he didn't stop until he passed through a side hall and into a square, stone-walled room. All kinds of weapons, armor, and other items hung on the wall in display racks or sat behind enchanted glass cases.

The assassin leader was already there.

"Why can't you jokers just get out of my way?" she snarled. "What did Lord Calzotto ever do to earn this loyalty?"

"Believe me, I'm doing this out of necessity," Azrael told her grimly.

"And _I_ have a contract to fulfill," the woman retorted. "Guess what that means?"

She sprang.

But this time, on a cushion of white mana.

The assassin crashed right into Azrael like a cougar and pinned him to the stone floor, her enchanted left hand holding him down by the throat, the other preparing to bring that gold knife down on his face.

Mizuki shouted and swung her wakizashi at the assassin's exposed back.

The mundane blade bounced off a white mana barrier. Kind of like the sort Morrel could conjure.

 _No!_ Mizuki watched as the gold knife blade came down -

Blue-black mana sizzled on the woman's left hand and dissolved her enchantment. The mana seared the woman's bare hand and she cried out, drawing back for just one precious second.

Her knife attack went wide and gouged into Azrael's right shoulder instead.

"You should know better than to touch someone with mana like mine," Azrael growled, getting to his feet, his left hand clapped over his wound. "A hard lesson, isn't it?"

The woman examined her mana-burned palm. "Nice try, bastard."

She leaped again, but this time, right at Mizuki.

Mizuki brought her wakizashi to bear, but too late; the assassin knocked Mizuki's blade aside and swung out with her gold blade. Mizuki gasped as the blade drew a shallow cut across her chest, and her shirt felt warm and wet from blood.

Already, the assassin was swinging again, and Mizuki ducked just in time to avoid the deadly blow. But the assassin's knee came out, and it made hard contact with Mizuki's forehead. Mizuki felt herself get thrown onto her back again, her ears ringing, her body suddenly limp.

 _That bitch!_

Azrael reached out and seized the assassin's knife wrist, wrenching it at a harsh angle until the woman yelped in pain and dropped her weapon.

Then she jabbed her other elbow right into Azrael's face.

Azrael stumbled back, his nose bleeding horribly, his eyes blinking in shock. He could do little as the assassin drew a longer, thinner, silver knife from her other sleeve and jabbed it at Azrael's neck.

Blue-black mana gathered at the point of contact and melted the weapon.

"What... you son of a bitch!" the assassin snarled. She dropped the knife's handle before it could dissolve in her hand. She retaliated with a knee kick that stunned Azrael for a precious second, and a hard jab sent him stumbling back into a wall.

 _Azrael!_ Mizuki dropped her useless wakizashi and reached out for anything she could reach. Her hand suddenly gripped a short sword's handle.

All she could do was swing the sword and pray.

Red-white mana flared to life along the short sword's blade, and the sparking mana tore through the assassin woman's mana shields and carved right into her back.

The smell of burnt flesh choked Mizuki's nostrils as the woman's body was seared on the spot.

Without another word, the assassin collapsed, her white mana gone, her body limp.

Azrael carefully approached Mizuki, the short sword's enchantments reflecting in his awestruck eyes. "That's a hell of an enchantment," he commented.

Mizuki panted for breath, gently lowering the sword. It was totally ordinary, aside from its enchantment: polished black wood handle, silver pommel, steel cross guard and blade... light and elegant in her hands. "Lord Calzotto has some good stuff in here, huh?"

"Very." Azrael looked around. "Quick: power off that enchantment and prepare to planeswalk away with me. Those other assassins might come back, and we have no further business here, anyway."

Mizuki squeezed the handle and mentally commanded the sword to power off. To her delight, it instantly obeyed her thoughts.

Neat!

Azrael picked up a pair of brass bracers with inset rubies and put them on. "Do you have any first-aid supplies in your pack?"

"Yeah. 'Course I do." Mizuki unslung her pack and drew out a roll of mildly enchanted gauze, and neatly wrapped up Azrael's and her own wounds. "Give it a few hours, and the cuts will totally close and heal," Mizuki explained with a weary grin.

"Impressive." Azrael conjured his blue-black mana gate."Lead the way back to Kamigawa," he said grimly, his red hair tossed around by the gate's energies. "Time's bound to be running out."

Mizuki felt a horrible chill as she activated her own gate. Azrael was no doubt right. How far had the Gitaxian Phyrexians already gotten on her home?

Deciding to leave her mundane wakizashi behind, Mizuki deposited her new sword into her pack and stepped into her gate, making fast strides across the Blind Eternities, leaving green-black footprints of raw mana as she went. Azrael easily kept up beside her on his long legs as other planes passed them by, some familiar, some not.

Mizuki stood at the edge of Kamigawa's atmosphere, right over where Juka-no-Nadachi was. She took a deep breath and thought one word.

 _Please..._


	5. Chapter 5

**FALL SEVEN TIMES**

 **by Ulquiorra9000**

 **Chapter 5**

As she stepped out of the Blind Eternities and set foot onto Kamigawa's soil, Mizuki braced herself. For whatever was waiting, whatever twisted freaks, whatever darkness loomed over her...

The familiar nighttime streets of Juka-no-Nadachi surrounded her.

Life as usual.

Home.

Azrael stepped out of his planeswalking gate next to Mizuki and dispelled it. He looked around, then at his companion. Concern crossed his face. "What's wrong, Mizuki? You're so pale."

"I..." Mizuki ran a trembling hand over her face. Her backpack felt heavy. "It's nothing. I just thought..."

Azrael put a gentle hand on Mizuki's shoulder. "The Phyrexians... of course. But they're clearly not here yet. I've grown familiar with their taint, and I sensed none of it in this town on arrival. All the same..." He puffed out his chest and steeled his eyes. "Let's keep our guard up."

"Yeah. I know." Mizuki watched as a trio of glowing kami drifted casually past a butcher shop's sign. "So, uh... have you been to Kamigawa before?"

"Just once, while searching for the shards of my Sphaera Vitae."

Mizuki blinked. "Oh, yeah. That whole adventure."

"Speaking of which," Azrael said firmly, "we've had enough adventuring for now. Let's find an inn and rest for a few hours. The sun should be up soon, and we can start scouting for Phyrexian infestation sites."

"You got it. Follow me." Mizuki loosened her hair, tossed it casually, and set off with Azrael right behind her.

Childhood memories overlapped with the familiar streets and shops, and Mizuki found herself tempted to forget why she was here with Azrael. Humans in commoner robes and straw sandals crowded past, some with wide straw hats, some with buckets of water or grain, and some in green monk robes, their heads shaved bald. Kitsune, the fox-people, appeared here and there, most of them either traveling monks in silver robes or samurai-for-hire with katanas sheathed at their belts. Mizuki even saw a few orochi, the snake-people, making their way through the crowds.

She'd always seen these crowds before. And the jewelry stands, the produce shops, the weapons store, the tanner, the weavers...

Mizuki pointed. "See that art shop?"

Azrael glanced over. "Yes."

"I went there once two years ago," Mizuki said, unable to fight a smile. "I told Morrel this story once... I went here with my dad, Keito, to buy a birthday present for a boy in my village nearby. I bought a wall scroll in that art shop, but the owners had mixed up their stock and I wound up buying an erotic scroll! Everyone at the party saw it."

Mizuki's chuckle died in her throat when Azrael failed to laugh. "Uh... did I offend you or something?" she asked.

Azrael blinked. "Oh! I'm sorry." He smiled, but it was too late.

Mizuki humphed. "Even Morrel had a better sense of humor than you..."

"But I'm not that Morrel boy." Azrael shrugged.

Mizuki rolled her eyes. "Ugh. Never mind. Look, we're almost there."

She brought Azrael to a two-story inn and drew back the sliding front door, then paid the clerk for two rooms. A _nakai_ woman approached, bowed politely, and escorted her guests two adjacent rooms. Azrael set foot in his.

"No! Wait, sir!" the _nakai_ cried. She pointed at his boots. "You cannot..."

"Let me." Mizuki stepped forward. "Azrael, you're supposed to change into house slippers here. Your shoes are only for traveling outside. It's meant to keep things clean and all."

Azrael bowed his head. "My mistake." He made the change and entered his room. "I won't need further service. Good night."

The _nakai_ glanced at Mizuki, then shuffled off with a disappointed air.

Mizuki grinned and kicked off her straw sandals. "You're worse than Morrel at this. You didn't even let the _nakai_ change you into your yukata."

Azrael's brow creased. "My what?"

"A nice robe you wear while staying at the inn... whatever. We won't be here long anyway." Mizuki hesitated, then joined Azrael in his room and slid shut the door.

She turned to face Azrael. "Look, if this quest is gonna work, we ought to have a better understanding. You're so... uh..."

"What have I done wrong?" Azrael asked.

"It's more like... Morrel listened to me when I told him why I had a curse in my arm," Mizuki admitted. She held out her left arm and flexed the fingers. Her heart felt heavy. "I could tell him anything, and he accepted me for who I was, and he... he even held me. Starting at that point, I knew he was someone I could rely on, someone who cared about me. I owed him."

 _By the spirits, I miss him so bad._ Mizuki fought to keep it off her face.

Azrael's face softened and he made a helpless gesture. "I'm sorry, Mizuki, but as I said, I'm not... I'm a stranger here." He looked around the room, from its low table (complete with a tea set) to the koi fish-pattern wall scrolls to the futon bed.

Mizuki saw her chance. She smiled. "Not too late to change that. Come on, we're safe here. Let's have a seat." She knelt at the low table, and Azrael reluctantly joined her, seated opposite her.

"Look. I can make us a drink, see?" Mizuki got her hands on the tea set and poured herself and Azrael two mugs of jasmine tea from the teapot (which was enchanted to keep the tea warm). She took a savory sip, and Azrael did the same.

"It's... quite good," Azrael commented.

"Isn't it?" Mizuki said. "Y'know, this is called a _ryokan_ , a basic inn found all over Kamigawa. Never been to one before, I'm guessing."

Azrael shook his head and looked curiously at a wall scroll's painting of a tree spirit.

"I've been to a few," Mizuki said, "with my family. My dad Keito, my mom Azashi, and my little sister Hana. We couldn't afford many trips, but sometimes my dad saved up enough. When I was little, he carried me on his shoulders and pretended to be some stone kami taking me on adventure!"

Azrael took another sip. "You must miss him."

"Yeah." Mizuki tried not to remember that day when Haijin-no-Imari had attacked... "What about you?"

"Me?"

"Uh-huh." Mizuki leaned across the table. "C'mon, who's the real you? You're a nice guy, now that you're not doin' your Sphaera Vitae scheme. I like getting to know people, even when I was a kid. I met all kinds of folks on those trips with my family..."

Azrael drummed his fingers on the low table, staring at the teapot. "Well..."

Mizuki's stomach twitched. "Uh-huh?"

"I grew up on the island nation of Ezig Natum on Dominaria, as I once told you," Azrael said, his tone conversational. For a change. "When I was a boy, my people were at their historic height, even rivalling Tolaria Academy! It was a place of learning and artifice, even for the lower classes. We built all kinds of wonders and filled our libraries with -"

Mizuki waved a hand to cut him off. "Hang on, you sound just like Veldor!"

Azrael finally chuckled. "Esper, Ezig Natum, Kaladesh... everywhere you go, people want to push the boundaries of knowledge, Mizuki. That doesn't turn you off, does it?"

"What the..." Mizuki scowled. "Are you teasing me?"

Azrael looked shocked. "No, not at all -"

Mizuki laughed and took another sip of jasmine tea. "Actually, that's a good thing. Means you're opening up to me, and not being all stiff and cold all the time."

Azrael looked faintly ruffled. "Yes. At any rate, right out of my mandatory schooling I enrolled at Jala-Zen University, one of the better colleges back on Dominaria. My sister Kaida was there too, and she was the student government's vice-president, so I had something to live up to."

"Oh boy, college life," Mizuki said with a growing grin. "Those places aren't nearly as tame and dignified as people try to make them sound."

"Indeed," Azrael said, wincing. "On my very first day, I joined the whirl-ball team, which was rated #1 at Ezig Natum, and among the best in all of Dominaria. I passed the tryouts with no problem, but..." He faltered, going red.

Mizuki stifled a giggle behind her hand. "Uh-huh?"

Azrael went pink. "You probably guessed it already: they mercilessly hazed me and three other boys who joined the team. The team captain, this elf named Ghan-Bo... he was a senior student. Transferred from some other college in Elfhame. First, Ghan-Bo made the four of us run around the track until we collapsed. One boy actually threw up."

Mizuki couldn't fight back her giggle. "Oh, no!"

" _I_ certainly didn't give Ghan-Bo the satisfaction. I didn't throw up... until I made it back to my dorm," Azrael admitted. "But that wasn't all. For the first team practice, he forced me and the three other newcomers to arrive in only our undershorts, despite the cold weather. I kept a dignified air, though, acting as though nothing was wrong. The girls on the team were rather distracted."

Mizuki thumped the table with her open palms as she fought not to laugh at him. She didn't trust herself to open her mouth.

"And _after_ practice, one of the other new boys asked for directions to the bathing rooms," Azrael added. "Ghan-Bo gave us the directions, and we followed them... into the _girls'_ bathing rooms. There was a good deal of screaming and excuses going back and forth."

Mizuki felt herself going red from trying to keep quiet.

"One of the girls punched my fellow on his face and shoved him to the floor," Azrael went on, "and I rushed over to help him, but another girl tripped me. But she didn't mean for me to fall into _another_ girl, and she and I ended up on the floor together, me on top of her!"

Mizuki gave in and threw back her head as she burst out laughing. She heard the other guests fussing at her through the walls to shut up.

"It was rather mortifying, Mizuki," Azrael said, sounding hurt.

Mizuki forced herself to settle down, but she couldn't stop her teasing smile. "Sorry, sorry! But that's..."

"For the rest of the semester," Azrael added, "everyone teased both me and that girl about it, imagining us as romantically involved. Which we weren't!"

"Oh, that's a shame."

"For the record," Azrael added, lifting his chin, "I _was_ involved with a girl named Idezza in my third year. She was studying merfolk sociology while I delved deeper into arcane artifice. We didn't understand each other's coursework very much, but we had a wonderful time until she grew tired of me and moved on."

Mizuki made a sympathetic noise. "She moved on? From you?"

"Perhaps I was too tame a person," Azrael said thoughtfully. "Some young women... they prefer men with rowdy behavior, don't they?"

Mizuki nodded. "Oh yeah, some sure do. I knew this girl named Megumi in my village who _only_ got involved with jerks. She was a few years older than me, and _every_ time her jerk boyfriends drove her nuts or did something horrible, I'd try and tell her to meet a decent fellow, but she thought I was too young to understand. Even when I was 15, she thought I was just some dumb kid."

"Did this girl learn the error of her ways on her own, then?"

Mizuki nodded again. "Sure did. She was with this sell-sword bastard named Hetsumon, and one day he showed up totally drunk and started groping and harassing her. She tried to fight back, so he punched her and called her a 'stupid bitch'. Then she hit _him_ , and he reached for his knife. But she knocked it outta his hands and punched his throat!" Mizuki remembered the grisly scene clearly as she spoke. "He stormed out of my village and never came back. My sister and I watched the whole thing. And my mom warned us about being with men like him, but hey, I already knew that."

Azrael's eyes widened. "You're a tough one, Mizuki. It seems that Kamigawa women know how to handle themselves."

"Pretty much," Mizuki said with a shrug, "but some of them are crazy freaks, too. A year after that, my neighbor, Ms. Jijinshi, thought that her husband was having an affair, and he kept denying it. So, Ms. Jijinshi snapped stabbed her husband three times and kept yelling like a lunatic until my dad and some other guy got her off of him, and she was driven out of town. No one found out for sure if her husband did cheat, but he was a nice guy and he repeatedly denied the accusation, so... that was that. Nothing else we could do."

Azrael rotated his tea mug in his hands. "It sounds like you learned quickly what other people can be like, and what they can do. Quite a lesson."

"I know, right?" Mizuki took another sip, then stood up and stretched. Her bandaged wounds stung, but not too badly. Their white mana enchantment was doing its job great. "Look, it was kinda nice having this chat with you. See? It's good to have a proper friend."

"Point well taken." Azrael stood and smiled modestly. "I admit, I was a rather introverted student and artificer back home, and I certainly didn't make friends during my Sphaera Vitae quest."

"No kidding." Mizuki rolled her head to relax her neck. "Okay, I'm goin' to bed. See you later."

Azrael nodded and approached the futon bed, removing his leather armor and cape as he went. "It's definitely time to get off our feet. We'll have to be in good shape for -"

He froze when a series of loud warning bells sounded all over Juka-no-Nadachi. And even from here, Mizuki could hear the panicked shouts of the crowds and the roaring voices of the town guards ordering people to safety.

Mizuki felt her insides go cold. "What do you think? Is it _them_?"

Azrael hastily threw his armor and cape back on, including the brass bracers he'd obtained on Fiora. "We have no choice. Come on."

*o*o*o*o*

Minamo Academy was exquisite. At least, from the outside.

Radiah Albazan stood at the edge of a waterfall, her high-heeled black leather boots planted on the slippery, mossy rocks as she breathed in the cool, damp air. Over the thundering waterfall sat a massive school of white stone brick and wood, its pointed, tiled roof and curly eaves typical of Kamigawa architecture. Side halls, dorms, and observatories stuck out at odd places. The whole thing was three stories tall and nearly square at the base, and it probably housed over two thousand people, students and staff alike.

Most of all, an enormous bubble of pale blue mana enveloped the entire school. Even from here, Radiah could feel the pulse of arcane energy, and it made her skin tingle.

 _Bah._

Radiah held out her gloved right hand and channeled her white Phyrexian mana. Her three-foot-long staff appeared in her clenched fingers, crafted of steel and coated in polished porcelain. Tubes of Phyrexian oil sat coiled under the staff's plating, wrapped around the steel rod that acted as the skeleton. On the outside, Radiah's staff was tipped with a glass ball that contained wild purple electricity, dancing and sizzling in its spherical prison.

"What do you think, boys and girls?" Radiah shouted smugly at the hundreds of blue Phyrexians massed around her. "Are you ready for the first step? You'll help make New Phyrexian history!"

The assembled golems, _compleat_ Neurok and drakes, and horrors roared, shrieked, and hissed the affirmative.

"That's great," Radiah said, beaming. "Summon the tide makers and prepare to open fire!"

The blue Phyrexians hastened to obey.


	6. Chapter 6

**FALL SEVEN TIMES**

 **by Ulquiorra9000**

 **Chapter 6**

Mizuki's bandaged wound stung as though anticipating further injury as she raced through the _ryokan_ 's hallways, sandaled feet pounding on the smooth wooden floor. Azrael was right behind her, his formidable blue-black mana aura filling the lantern-lit hallways.

Would it be enough? Against something like the Phyrexians?

"Young miss! Sir!" A _nakai_ held out her hands, palms out, her face twisted with fright. "Please go back to your rooms, where you are safe! The town is under attack. I cannot let you go out -"

"We are not helpless, madam," Azrael said firmly, putting his hands on the robed woman's shoulders. "Please step aside. We can help." As he spoke, the sound of screams in the street grew louder, and this time, Mizuki could hear horrible, metallic roaring and screeching.

Was it too late?

"I... if you wish." The _nakai_ nodded shakily and stepped aside.

Mizuki drew her brand-new sword and mentally commanded it to manifest its red-white enchantment. At once, sizzling mana coated the short sword's blade, spitting red and white sparks. Now was as good a time as any to test this thing!

Juka-no-Nadachi's nighttime streets swarmed with activity. Townsfolk raced for cover in shops, inns, or wherever they could reach as a squad of armored samurai charged across the open brick street to meet the incoming invaders. Already, several buildings burned in the gloomy night, the orange light eerie.

"Get outta here!" the samurai tai-cho, or captain, snapped. His face was stern under his horned helmet, his enchanted katana drawn. "It's not safe. Let us handle this."

Mizuki snarled. "See this sword? I've been in a few scraps before, buckethead. My friend can fight, too. Just watch us!"

One of the other samurai hesitated, eyes wide at the sight of the incoming Phyrexians. "Tai-cho!"

"Dammit! Attack formation C! Let's go, people!" the samurai tai-cho roared. He flourished his katana through the air, and its green-white enchantment hummed, leaving a brilliant afterimage as the blade whirled.

The Phyrexians advanced.

Two massive golems, their bodies plated in oily chrome, took the lead. Their clawed feet cracked and splintered the brick street underneath them, their beefy hands flexing. As the golems closed in, oversized hypodermic needles emerged from their wrists, mounted on mechanical assemblies. Tubes of black oil ran along the machinery's outer surface.

With a collective shout, the samurai all charged.

Razor-sharp katana blades skated off the two golems' chrome plating, and the beasts chuckled as though the attack were some joke. Which it effectively was. The golems' chrome-plated, eyeless faces leered, their mouths opening to show red gums and many sharp teeth.

A samurai wailed as one golem thrust out its arm and impaled him on its sword-sized needle.

"No! Juusei!" the tai-cho roared. Snarling, he whirled his enchanted katana through the air and brought it down with a flash of mana.

The golem wailed as the tai-cho's blade cleanly severed its arm at the elbow. The arm stump glowed from leftover mana, oil leaking onto the brick street.

The other golem shouted something in a bizarre language and pointed. Around him, the rest of the Phyrexian squad charged.

"Mizuki!" Azrael warned her, fists held at the ready.

"Yeah, I see 'em." Mizuki set her jaw and poised her enchanted short sword. She tried to show no fear as bizarre, chrome-armored human cyborgs charged. Some had extra mechanical arms, or two heads, or surgical equipment for weapons. And all had faint but sinister blue mana auras around them.

Just what _were_ they?

A Phyrexian human screeched in a cold voice and raised its jagged bone saw, preparing to swing. Mizuki was faster; she leaped to intercept the creature and slashed her enchanted short sword in a horizontal sweep. The effect was immediate; the red-white mana seared right through the Phyrexian's torso and split it in half. The beast crumpled in two smoking halves, its bone saw clattering to the brick street.

Nearby, Azrael swung an enchanted fist and met the healthy golem's own fist halfway. Both beings struggled to push past each other's knuckles, their arms shaking. But Mizuki saw the golem draw a knife with its free arm and prepare to slash with it.

Mizuki shouted a warning, but Azrael was already moving. As the samurai fought bravely around him, Azrael broke away from the golem's fist and ducked. The knife whooshed through empty air, and Azrael snapped out a heavy kick to the golem's knee. Mizuki heard chrome and muscle shear under the pressure, and the golem buckled, disoriented. It grunted as Azrael delivered a terrific hook to its eyeless face. The chrome helmet caved under the pressure.

Then the golem snapped out its elbow and caught Azrael right in the midriff.

Azrael was sent flying back, and two more human Phyrexians converged on him. Their knives and needles tore into his leather armor, and red blood leaked from the wounds.

"Azrael!" Mizuki hurried over, but the same golem intercepted her, swinging a fist. It connected. Hard.

Mizuki's vision flickered as the beast's oily knuckles crashed into her temple, and she felt herself tumble helplessly across the street, ears ringing. Terrific pain thundered in her head with every heartbeat and she watched the golem tower over her to finish her off.

 _No!_

The tai-cho's green-white blade blocked the golem's death strike, and the Phyrexian brute grunted in surprise. It yowled as the samurai pierced its cyborg chest, the green-white enchantment boiling away its oily flesh.

The golem leaned forward and slammed its hard forehead right onto the tai-cho's helmet, shattering it in one blow and stunning the samurai. The golem kicked the samurai to the ground and stomped on his right shin, breaking the bone. The man roared in pain.

 _Got... to help him!_ Mizuki winced and forced herself to her feet just in time. She wildly slashed her short sword through the air, and the sizzling blade severed the golem's leg at the knee.

"Marvelous!" The tai-cho staggered and leaned on his good knee, then swiped his katana through the air. He sliced off the golem's other knee, then seized the creature's neck in one hand.

With a look of steely resolve, the tai-cho gripped his katana with one hand and thrust it through the golem's open mouth.

The golem slumped to the brick street in a dead heap.

"Ouch!" the tai-cho winced and lay himself back down. "Girl, what's your name?"

"M-Mizuki. Why?"  
"Mizuki, you fight well," the tai-cho said, his face pale with pain. "Do me a favor and save this town for me, will you?"

"I..." Mizuki nodded. "Yeah, of course. Watch me."

Meanwhile, Azrael blasted away the two Phyrexians who grappled with him, then smashed apart another one with his fists. However, there were still over twenty Phyrexians left, including the one-armed golem. Worse, three more samurai had fallen by now. Azrael found himself surrounded.

"Get down!" Azrael shouted.

The survivng samurai obeyed, and Mizuki also dived for cover, laying flat on the street.

Intense black mana gathered around Azrael's left fingertip as he held his hand out. He balled his hand into a fist save for his finger, and he allowed his spell to charge to its maximum.

A cone-like jet of black mana issued forth, vaporizing two Phyrexians where they stood. But that wasn't all; Azrael turned on the spot, sweeping his destructive cone in a wide arc. All the remaining Phyrexians were enveloped in the lethal spell's area of destruction, and they were reduced to ash.

Save for the one-armed golem.

As Azrael's spell died down, the golem, merely wounded from the attack, knocked two samurai aside and punched Azrael with its good hand. Azrael was thrown onto a shop's wall, clearly exhausted from his spell. He could do little as the golem advanced on him.

"NO!" Mizuki ignored her aching body and charged. She hastily hurled her enchanted sword through the air, and the weapon impaled the golem right in its back. The beast screeched and stumbled aside as the short sword's enchantment boiled away its flesh in a noxious cloud of smoke.

This gave Azrael his chance. He raised his arms and tapped the rubies on his brass bracers. The gems glowed white-hot with red mana.

Azrael converged his twin fists on the golem's plated head.

Two explosions blasted from his knuckles upon contact.

Chrome shards, bits of brain matter, and oil droplets flew everywhere as Azrael's heavy punches connected. The headless golem gurgled, then slumped into a dead pile on the street.

A horrible silence fell, save for the groaning of the wounded and the crackle of the burning buildings.

Mizuki drew her sword from the dead golem and held the weapon casually at her side. She felt sweat running down her face as she panted for breath. "Whoa, Azrael... I recognized that black mana spell. And those bracers! That was fantastic!"

Azrael nodded, his long red hair clumped with sweat. "Yes. I saw you use that mana beam spell against Nihil, and I figured out the arcane formula soon after. But this was my first time actually firing the spell."

Mizuki grinned. "At least _you_ can use it against the Phyrexians. Hell knows I can't, since I lost Haijin-no-Imari's curse. I can't believe part of me actually _misses_ that..."

Azrael ran his fingers along the brass bracers' polished surface. "These compliment my martial arts quite well! They release even more power than my own enchanted punches, but the rubies will need time to recharge. I suppose I'll experiment with alternate uses for that power as well."

"Hell yeah." Mizuki admired her enchanted sword. "Fiora had some cool stuff. I'd thank your friend Lord Calzotto, but, you know..."

Azrael merely shrugged and powered off the rubies.

One samurai tended to the tai-cho while the others spread out to check the town for any more Phyrexians as blue mages doused the flames. Mizuki joined the samurai, her sword at the ready.

"Can't believe it. We haven't even had the odd thief or bandit for weeks," one samurai muttered darkly. "And now these freaks show up... must've come from the darkest, smelliest corner of the Takenuma Swamp."

Mizuki bit her tongue. Did she dare reveal the Phyrexians' true nature and plane of origin? Maybe Azrael should handle that part...

Another samurai snorted. "Ain't so tough, were they? We put 'em down nice and quick."

"You got a point, Genjo," the first samurai said with a chuckle.

This time, Mizuki couldn't bite her tongue.

"Lots of people could have died," she snapped, her face warm from anger. "And you guys survived because my friend and I helped! There could be more. There's bound to be."

"Well, look at this," the second samurai, Genjo, commented. "Look, missy... we're grateful you and your redhead friend lent us a hand. But what could you possibly know about those Takenuma freaks? You sayin' you've seen 'em before?"

"I..." Mizuki fell silent. What to say? She had certainly risked her life fighting Nihil on Dominaria, and had even delivered the killing blow. But this was an invasion army... and what _did_ she know? Even Azrael didn't seem to know much more, except that they had wiped out his island home of Ezig Natum.

Mizuki suddenly felt totally lost all over again. She bowed her head, her mind exhausted. "F... forget it."

The samurai muttered among themselves but had the grace to not say anything else. Luckily, no other Phyrexians appeared, and the tai-cho declared Juka-no-Nadachi secure for the time being. While his men resumed their posts, Mizuki followed Azrael's mana aura to a healer's shop along the main street.

Two kitsune women tended to Azrael's injuries with white mana glowing on their paws. They wore the usual pearl-colored silk robes of their profession, and motioned to Mizuki to lay on the next bed. "You helped save the town," one of them said kindly. "We will mend your wounds, free of charge. Thank you for what you did."  
"Yeah. Sure." Mizuki trudged over and lay on the bed, glancing over at the shirtless Azrael. Damn, he was like a bodybuilder! Mizuki tried not to stare and failed. "You're tougher than I thought."

Azrael chuckled. "Playing whirl-ball in college will do that." His face fell. "This won't be the last time we see _them_ , Mizuki."

"I figured that, though the samurai had other ideas." Mizuki hugged herself. "We've got a long day ahead of us tomorrow, don't we? There's so much to do, so much to figure out..."

"I won't back down," Azrael said doggedly as the kitsune mended more of his wounds. The skin sealed without a trace. "We'll find a way."

"We'd better." Mizuki stared up at the rafters, unable to shake that feeling that she was lost in a huge and terrifying Multiverse.

The least she could do was not show it in front of Azrael...


	7. Chapter 7

**FALL SEVEN TIMES**

 **by Ulquiorra9000**

 **Chapter 7**

"Hisoka sensei!"

Minamo Academy shuddered yet again, and Hisoka held down everything on his desk to keep them from falling off. Around him, the hanging wall scrolls in his office swung back and forth, and his decorative vases and statues had long since fallen over and shattered on the polished wood floor.

And now the same instructor had burst into his office again, with the same news.

"We won't last much longer against these... invaders!" the teacher cried, wringing his hands. He was barely twenty-five, one of the newest members of the legendary school's staff, recruited from a town in the Araba Plains. He wore the white sleeveless haori jacket and blue robes of a junior professor.

Hisoka's patience finally snapped and he rose to his feet, considerably taller than the simpering junior teacher. His billowing sapphire-blue robes, with their curly gold patterns and protective enchantments, gave the old man a proper air of power and authority. He needed it now more than ever.

"Calm yourself, Reitaro!" Hisoka thundered, and his tone instantly silenced the frightened Reitaro.

Hisoka ignored another quake as he strode from behind his wide desk and across the large office's floor, withered hands clasped behind his back. "How long has this school stood at the water's edge, Reitaro? Do you remember what I told you?"

"Y... yes, sensei!" Reitaro dipped his head. "Three thousand years."

"Has any hostile force ever claimed it?"

"No, sensei."

Hisoka stroked his long white beard. "What leads you to believe that this siege shall be any different? Do you think it is the first? Or merely _your_ first?"

Reitaro licked his lips and sank to his knees, bowing an apology. "Sensei, I... I thought only of myself. I realize how foolish I have been."

"I am not Minamo Academy's first headmaster to face an external threat," Hisoka boomed, looming over Reitaro's humble form. "The barriers will hold. And help is on the way. I trust my security staff to keep the siege force at bay until then. Do you also trust them?"

Reitaro seemed close to tears. "Yes, sensei! I do!"

"Then stand up, Reitaro." Hisoka didn't offer a hand; he stood there, his most severe look on his face, as Reitaro slowly stood.

"I... I only panicked, sensei, because the enemies' numbers seem to grow, and the waterfall has become dark."

"I know." Hisoka sighed and motioned for Reitaro to join him at one of the windows. From here, both men could see the inner layers of the school's massive blue mana barriers, and those arcane defenses constantly flickered, sputtered, and threw out sparks from the pressure of the invading horde. Hisoka was sure that the enchantments had been more rigorously tested in these last five days than ever in Kamigawa's history.

But the invaders... Hisoka didn't dare show it, but even he felt a tremor of dread at the sight. Bizarre beings of chrome, sickly flesh, and mishappen body parts had massed around the school's barriers and hammered on them relentlessly. Over thirty defenders, human and soratami (moonfolk) alike constantly threw out blue mana from their open palms to keep the barriers intact.

The soratami... Hisoka had been hailed as a genius to convince even a handful of them to descend from Oboro, Palace in the Clouds to work for him as a gesture of goodwill. Was that all that kept Minamo safe?

And the water... Reitaro was right: three massive, wide-mouthed creatures sat at the cliffside, steadily vomiting what looked like dark oil into the waterfall's once-pure currents. Each beast must have been two hundred feet long, tube-like and scaly, supported on spider-like legs. They looked like oversized leeches, except that they _gave off_ fluids rather than drink them.

Just what was being fed into that sacred waterfall?

Would it taint the rest of Kamigawa?

 _Would_ Hisoka's distress call be answered in time?

Hisoka gestured for Reitaro to leave, then turned and studied the long row of inkbrush drawings of Minamo's former headmasters, each with their name written in ornate characters underneath. Hisoka would be damned if he was Minamo's last... but he found himself wishing he could ask the old headmasters for help.

*o*o*o*o*

"Okay, there's some more. For sure."

Mizuki crouched atop a hill and scoped out the lanscape with a collapsible telescope that Azrael had bought for her in the last town. A light wind picked up as the evening sun sank below the many tree-dotted hills, and cawing birds flew past overhead. It _would_ have been a pleasant evening, but the last few evenings since Juka-no-Nadachi had proven otherwise. Like this one.

Through the lenses, Mizuki spotted them: two Phyrexian golems. There was no mistaking those hulking cyborg bodies plated in chrome and oily flesh, or their eyeless, toothy heads, or the oversized needle machinery on their wrists. Mizuki felt a chill snake its way down her spine as she watched the vile golems stride across Kamigawa soil, pointing and barking orders at their minions. Corrupted humans, partially plated in chrome and wearing tattered leather clothing, lurched around as though looking for something. Maybe more victims?

Then Mizuki saw it: a creek that ran black with Phyrexian oil. As she watched in horror, several Phyrexian humans tinkered with the knobs and gears on a machine that sat by the creekside, then moved on. Mizuki could clearly see two nozzles on the machine that pumped oil right into the creek.

Mizuki lowered her telescope and handed it over. She swallowed. "See for yourself. More oil machines. By sources of water."

Azrael was crouched on one knee, his blue cape swathed around him as he scanned the scene through the telescope. He grunted to himself, then handed it back. "It seems that our working theory is nearly proven. The blue Phyrexians spread their influence through oily water. Those human down there... they're native, unlike those who attacked us at Juka-no-Nadachi. I can tell from the remains of their clothes."

Mizuki's breath caught in her throat. "What... huh?"

"And their mechanical components look newer, almost improvised," Azrael added darkly. "I remember the ones that invaded Ezig Natum. I saw a few of them up close while I fled for shelter with my sister. _Those_ Phyrexian humans had uniform appearances, but these don't. Check again."

With shaking hands, Mizuki brought the telescope's eyepiece to her face and gave the oily cyborg humans another, closer look. Azrael was right; they were irregular in design, and Mizuki recognized the armor style some of them wore. The same armor as freelance warriors of this plane! And some even had chrome-enhanced katanas or wakizashi swords at their belts. There was no mistake.

"Kami protect us..." Mizuki lowered the telescope again and collapsed it against her open palm. "So, the Phyrexians are already turning my own people against us!"

"And I'm certain that the process will accelerate and feed on itself," Azrael added. "More _compleat_ humans means that more oil-spreading machines are installed, therefore corrupting more people, and so on. And I'm sure that the other races will soon be affected: kitsune, orochi, akki goblins, even the ogres."

Mizuki felt numb. Two days after the scuffle at Juka-no-Nadachi, she and Azrael had taken a horse-dawn carriage across Kamigawa to scout for Phyrexians like these. At first, few had appeared... and then they were _everywhere_! How could the Phyrexians spread so fast?! She and Azrael had been forced to travel on foot during the following three days and hide regularly to keep a low profile and evade _compleat_ humans and their golem masters.

"Just how much time do we have left?" Mizuki breathed.

"Enough to keep searching for a solution," Azrael said firmly. "Now, did you say that a powerful daimyo lives around here?"

"Yeah. Lord Hiroshi Ryugan Kirinji." Mizuki tried to remember what she could about him. "His castle is, um... just three hours' walk from here in that direction." She pointed. "It's huge, and lots of farmers and tradesmen work on those lands in exchange for protection by Lord Kirinji's samurai army. He's even got ninjas on his payroll as not only assassins, but scouts and spies. The legendary Higure, the Still Wind is their current captain. Lord Kirinji paid a crazy price to get Higure on his personal staff."

Azrael nodded. "Impressive. When I visited this plane a few months back with Rohkan, searching for a possible Sphaera Vitae shard, I heard stories of ninjas. I dismissed them at the time, but..."

"You ain't gonna dismiss them now," Mizuki said earnestly. "Seriously, ninjas have stolen secrets and killed people when those missions were considered impossible for anyone else. And Higure... he's probably the best of the best! We need him and Lord Kirinji's army to fight back against the Phyrexians and buy us time to find a better solution to this mess."

Azrael brushed a lock of reddish hair from his face, his brown eyes thoughtful. "Convincing him to risk his men's lives to fight for our cause should be an interesting challenge. So far, we have only seen scouting parties or task parties of Phyrexians, not a proper army. Would this Lord Kirinji mobilize his samurai forces for that?"

Mizuki faltered. This wasn't her strong suit, but who else appreciated the looming problem besides her and Azrael? She took a deep breath. "Higure's ninja squads are bound to have seen more than us. Maybe they've found a developing Phyrexian army that's worth fighting? If so, we could join and persuade Lord Kirinji to expand his operations to other areas, too. Anywhere where you and I find Phyrexians, not just Lord Kirinji's private lands."

"Well, how about that." Azrael smiled. "Mizuki, you underestimate yourself. You make valid points, and you clearly have the people's best interests at heart. How could any daimyo refuse your request?"

Mizuki felt her face warm. "Hey, I'm just thinking on my feet."

"The people of Kamigawa are lucky to have you looking out for them," Azrael said fondly. "Now, let's find the optimal route to this Lord Kirinji's castle, and -"

"- how about _we_ show you a route?" came a new voice.

Mizuki slowly turned around.

Four horse-mounted samurai towered over her and Azrael, two with swords drawn, the other two with bows and arrows ready to fire. Their armor was painted gold and green, the official colors of the noble Kirinji house. More to the point, one samurai carried a banner wit the house Kirinji name and logo on it. No doubt _now_!

Mizuki held her hands up in surrender. "H-hey there, fellas."

"Identify yourselves!" the banner carrier barked.

Azrael also turned, his face and voice calm. "I am Azrael, a freelance agent. I mean Lord Kirinji and his subjects no harm."

"I'm Mizuki. Just a traveler," Mizuki said earnestly. "Look, we weren't spying! Well, not on Lord Kirinji's people! On the invaders. You've seen them too, right? We're trying to figure out how to stop them."

Mizuki tried to hide her growing panic. She could draw her enchanted short sword, but it wouldn't save her against these armed samurai. Especially since they were activating green-white enchantments on their weapons.

"If you try to fight or run, we _will_ strike you down," the same samurai declared. "You are suspicious agents on the border of Lord Kirinji's lands!"

Azrael stiffened. "We are _not_ in league with the invaders."

"How do _we_ know that? Lord Kirinji understands the value of spies," the samurai countered. "We'll leave that for our security staff to decide. Come with us, or lose your heads." As he spoke, he and another samurai pointed their enchanted katanas at Mizuki and Azrael. The green-white enchantments hummed and glowed in the gathering twilight, the glare forcing Mizuki to narrow her aching eyes.

"Okay... okay," she admitted. "We'll show you that we're not your enemies."

The samurai scoffed. "That's to be determined." He gave a hand signal, and one of his fellows put away his bow and arrow and clasped metal wrist cuffs on Mizuki's and Azrael's arms, the cuffs held closely together with blue-white mana. Mizuki was positioned on the rear of one samurai's saddle while Azrael was set up on another horse. Mizuki knew better than to try and jump off once the horses got into motion; what good would that do? She didn't want an unnecessary fight, and besides, she and Azrael really were innocent, and she wanted a chance to prove that in his court.

Without another word of complaint, Mizuki sat still as the four samurai set their horses into motion and rode across the hills as the first stars gathered overhead.


	8. Chapter 8

**FALL SEVEN TIMES**

 **by Ulquiorra9000**

 **A/N:** Kamigawa is divided in half: utsushiyo, the mortal realm, and kakuriyo, the world of the kami. Kind of like Nyx on Theros.

 **Chapter 8**

The good news: Lord Hiroshi Kirinji's castle was even bigger and better than Mizuki had imagined it, and he had countless horse-mounted samurai, human and kitsune, patrolling the grounds. He was certainly the man to help resist the Phyrexians!

The bad news: instead, he gave Mizuki and Azrael a less than warm welcome.

Mizuki winced as she was forced onto her knees on the floor of Lord Kirinji's throne room, Azrael on his knees next to her. They both had their cuffs on, the blue-white enchantments humming in the otherwise silent room. Mizuki's knees already protested against the hard, polished wooden floor, but she didn't dare make a sound. She just wished that her red-white sword hadn't been confiscated! She felt vulnerable without it. Well, she _was_ , aside from Azrael's own prowess.

What a lousy evening.

Green-gold banners hung from the ceiling, all marked with the black characters of the Kirinji clan's name. Samurai stood at regular intervals in ceremonial armor, halberds in hand, faces hidden behind the stylized, demon-like masks over their faces. Some samurai had such masks in addition to their horned helmets to intimidate their foes. Mizuki wouldn't admit it, but it was sure as hell working!

Other than that, the throne room _would_ have been quite pleasant. Huge, painted vases stood on pedestals, along with bonsai trees and clusters of royal flowers, and expensive wall scrolls were illuminated by attractive paper lanterns overhead. Several vassals stood at the ready, all wearing green-gold robes, their faces inscrutable.

Meanwhile, the daimyo himself sat on a wide, square cushion in front of a wall completely painted with a diorama featuring several of the legendary spirit dragons, noble samurai, monks, and ravenous demons. From start to finish, the scene glorified the Kirinji clan in no uncertain terms.

"My lord!" one of the four samurai who had dragged in Mizuki and Azrael saluted. "These two were found trespassing on the estate's border. They deny being hostile scouts."

Mizuki was bursting to yell her anger and frustration of this whole situation, but somehow, she kept it inside. Seeing Azrael calm next to her seemed to have an effect.

Lord Kirinji leaned forward, muttering something to an elderly advisor who sat kneeled next to him. Then he said something in reassuring tones to the attractive young woman who sat on his other side, and finally, the daimyo turned back to the captives. "My top advisor, the trusted Osamu, can sense auras with exquisite finesse," he said, his voice echoing in the decorated hall. "You two... you are not here for my estate's best interests, are you?"

Was this the time to speak up? Mizuki tested the waters. "We're not spying on you, Lord Kirinji! It's the opposite. We wanted an audience!"

"And you got it," one of the samurai commented snidely.

"Silence!" Lord Kirinji held up an open hand, a dark scowl on his face as Osamu the advisor muttered something else to him. The daimyo nodded.

"One of you is not even a Kamigawa-born man, apparently," Lord Kirinji added. He pointed. "The man with red hair... bring him closer. Restrained, of course."

Azrael's hands were still bound by the enchanted cuffs, but all the same, two samurai roughly seized his upper arms and half-dragged him closer to the sneering daimyo.

The young woman, meanwhile, watched with what looked like an expression of muted guilt.

Once again, Azrael was forced to his knees, his red hair askew across his face. He looked up when Osamu gruffly grabbed his chin and forced him to look up. "What are you, bastard?" the advisor roared. "Your aura's unlike anything I've ever seen!"

Mizuki watched helplessly from twenty paces away as Azrael inhaled sharply. "My name is Azrael," he said flatly. "I'm an artificer and practicioner of many martial arts styles."

"An artificer, are you?" Osamu released Azrael's chin and smacked the side of his head. "Why don't you try and tinker yourself a way out of this mess? Oh, you can't! That's right!"

Azrael was once again silent as Mizuki watched in despair. What was going on?! Lord Kirinji was a tough one, but he and his men were never known for this paranoia and cruelty! Was there no one on Kamigawa who would help her? Was the whole plane oblivious to the danger prowling their lands and waters?

"From where do you hail?" Lord Kirinji demanded. "Speak, Azrael!"

Azrael tossed his red hair. "I was born and raised in a city of artificers and scholars and educated at a university. I have been a wandering agent ever since."

Lord Kirinji narrowed his eyes. "And _where_ is this home city of yours?"

"Far," Azrael said.

Osamu punched Azrael hard on the jaw. "Don't you play games with us!" he roared. "Give us a location! Where were you born? Where did you receive your education? Who are your family?"

"Even his name is strange," Lord Kirinji added thoughtfully.

"My home city... is long gone," Azrael panted. "Destroyed and sacked by the same monsters that are spreading across Kamigawa! That is why my friend and I presented ourselves to you! To prevent the same from happening here!"

Mizuki held her breath. Was this her and Azrael's big break? Azrael made his case plain and clear... the daimyo would have to bite!

"Bah." Lord Kirinji waved a dismissive hand. "Strange beings, probably from the Takenuma Swamp, have been roaming the countryside. My army will handle them. Funny that you and the girl over there arrive just as they do. To scout for my weaknesses?"

"No. Conversely, to rally you and enlighten you to the grave threat!" This time, there was a note of panic in Azrael's voice. "You must listen!"

Osamu seized Azrael's leather armor collar and shook him roughly. "Enough lies!" he barked. "Hiroshi should have your head for this!"

Lord Kirinji tilted his head. "One moment, Osamu. Have that girl over there brought to me."

Mizuki braced herself as two more samurai dragged her to Azrael's side, closer to the daimyo and his fellows. Up here, she tried to catch the eye of the seated young woman, but the girl didn't reciprocate.

Lord Kirinji's green-gold robes crinkled as he leaned forward to study Mizuki. He wore a finely-woven silver haori coat, too, embedded with emeralds. Such obvious wealth... why wasn't it being used against the Phyrexians better?!

"So, who are _you_?" Lord Kirinji demanded.

"M-my name's Mizuki," Mizuki said shakily. "Born and raised in a small town near the Jukai Forest. I'm just a wanderer, but I've come to realize the threat our world faces, my lord. Seriously! I'm here to humbly ask for your help."

Lord Kirinji leaned back and laughed harshly. "My castle is in no danger!" he declared. "My army will make sure of that."

Mizuki snapped. "This is about our whole world! It's more than your lands at risk! _Everyone_ could die if something isn't done!"

Mizuki yelped in pain as Osamu smacked her hard across the face. She fell back in an awkward heap.

"Daughter, can you believe these buffoons?" Lord Kirinji turned to the young woman seated next to him. "Ayano, my darling, they insist on insulting the state of my estate's security!"

Even from down here, Mizuki could see that Ayano, probably in her mid-20s, was a girl of astonishing, regal beauty. Unlike her daimyo father, she wore blue silk robes with intricate patterns in gold weave, and a pure white under-robe. Her shiny dark hair was loose, falling over her shoulders. She sat politely, hands folded in her lap.

But Ayano didn't have her father's, or Osamu's, expression of gleeful superiority. Rather, she bowed her head and looked away, eyes shut. Two tears leaked from her lids. "I am sorry to see this, father."

Mizuki's eyes widened. _Whoa. She's putting on an act! That response satisfies her dad, but I think she really means "this is horrible!"_

At least someone was sensible around here...

"Mizuki," Lord Kirinji said, and at his command, Osamu helped Mizuki back to a proper kneeling position. "I can see that you're a humble but proper daughter of Kamigawa. Maybe I'll be lenient on you if you can explain Azrael's nonsense. Where is he truly from? What is he capable of? What kind of threat does he pose to my estate and noble clan?"

Mizuki licked her lips. The next few words out of her mouth could make all the difference. She had little doubt that Azrael might be beheaded by a samurai's sword on Lord Kirinji's command.

Mizuki decided that enough was enough. "He... Azrael comes from Dominaria," she said slowly. "Just as we live in utsushiyo, apart from the kami world of kakuriyo, Azrael's home is separate from ours. But don't worry; it's no danger to us. He comes from a different society, but I beg you, be lenient on him, too! He's faced the invaders before. He knows stuff we need."

There was a great deal of concerned muttering through the throne room. Ayano, for her part, snapped her eyes open and gave Mizuki an amazed look that she craftily hid from her father and Osamu.

"A third world? Dominaria?" Lord Kirinji's brow furrowed. "Is that why Osamu sensed such an alien aura about him?"

"You'd probably figure it out sooner or later. Might as well get on your good graces and explain it now," Mizuki said earnestly. "We're fighting the worst kind of enemy. They're not from the Takenuma Swamp. They're Phyrexians, and any non-Phyrexian life is only fit to be butchered or assimilated into their horde!"

Lord Kirinji shared a look with Osamu. "Phyrexians? Osamu, have you heard of such a race?"

Osamu shook his head. "No. Not at all."

"There's no real danger," Lord Kirinji added, his confidence stronger than ever in his tone. "Why, only three days ago, Osamu returned from a diplomatic mission to the neighboring Sachiken clan, and he experienced no undue interference on the way there or back. You seem to overestimate the 'Phyrexian' threat, Mizuki."

Mizuki swallowed. _What? That doesn't... that can't be right! Is Lord Kirinji in denial or something? Is there even any point trying to argue?_

"I recommend," Osamu declared, "that we detain these two until we can prepare for a proper interrogation. I'm sure that Higure would love to beat the truth from them."

Mizuki felt a surge of terror. She doubted that she or Azrael would get out of _that_ alive. "N-no, that's not -!"

"Silence," Lord Kirinji demanded again. "It seems that you and Azrael are not willing to cooperate with us any further. I pride myself on the security of my jail wing. You'll get to see for yourself in just a moment. Men!"

Four samurai approached and forced Mizuki and Azrael to their feet.

 _He's crazy! Or scared shitless and in total denial!_ Mizuki glared at the daimyo as though to silently plead for her freedom. But there was no pity or compassion in Lord Kirinji's eyes, or Osamu's.

Ayano, however, drew away when her father tried to give her a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

"I'm... not feeling well, father," Ayano said quietly.

"I understand," Lord Kirinji said as Mizuki and Azrael were escorted to a doorway leading deeper into the castle. "This must have been distressing for you. But I insist that you see how I handle such things."

Ayano dipped her head. "I understand, father."

Ten minutes later, Mizuki was sitting on the simple bed in a square, stone-walled jail room, the cuffs still binding her wrists. She felt numb with horror. Not even the gentle moonlight pouring through the barred window could calm her.

What the hell was she supposed to do now? The wooden door was thick and enchanted; she tried calling out to Azrael, but her voice crashed uselessly on the door.

She curled up in a ball and squeezed her eyes shut, fighting back tears. Why did this have to happen? Why?!

Hours passed. Mizuki tested the door and the cracks between the stone bricks for any weaknesses or gaps, but found none. She strained to hear anything from Azrael's neighboring cell, but again, she got nothing. Might as well save the energy, so she curled up on the cot as the moon drifted across the sky.

Mizuki didn't open her eyes until a bright light glowed through her eyelids.

Hardly daring to believe it, Mizuki opened her eyes.

A katana's blade had been thrust through the thick door, melting the wood around it with its vibrant green-white enchantments. Sizzling, burning wood filled the cell with smoke.

The weakened door gave way when the katana's wielder kicked it inwards. The door slammed to the ground.

Enchanted katana in hand, Ayano Kirinji stood in the open doorway, a look of fierce determination on her face.


	9. Chapter 9

**FALL SEVEN TIMES**

 **by Ulquiorra9000**

 **Chapter 9**

Mizuki bolted to her feet, still staring in shock as the daimyo's daughter took a step into the stone-brick cell. The enchantment on Ayano's katana filled the whole cell with pale green light.

"We don't have much time," Ayano said tensely. "Stay close to me, and we'll free Azrael, too." She flicked the blade through the air and sliced of Mizuki's cuffs.

"Wh-what -" Questions buzzed in Mizuki's mind like hornets. "But the daimyo... he won't -?"

"I subdued the jail wing's guards," Ayano explained in a rush. "It will buy us a a few minutes. But just in case..." She drew something from in her kimono - Mizuki's short sword! Ayano tossed it and Mizuki caught it with one hand.

"Guard my back," Ayano said, "and follow my lead."

"Y-you got it." Hardly daring to believe it, Mizuki joined Ayano in the jail wing's lantern-lit hallway and kept watch as Ayano stabbed her sword right into the solid wood door of Azrael's cell. Within a minute, the door was vaporized, and Azrael slowly stepped out.

The artificer dusted himself off once Ayano sliced off his cuffs. "This is bold of you, my lady. You have a plan in mind?" He fired up his blue-black mana aura.

Ayano nodded, her dark eyes glinting with determination. "I do. We're going to Osamu's private chambers. Quickly."

 _What the...?_ Mizuki activated her sword's red-white enchantment and kept the weapon at the ready as she and Azrael followed Ayano through the massive castle's hallways. So far, no guards. Good.

"Something horrible has happened," Ayano explained sadly. "Just last week, my father was the same kind man he always was. But now... he and Osamu are _not_ themselves. I kept quiet out of duty. But in light of what you both told us, I have to take action."

"So you definitely believe us?" Mizuku blurted.

"I do," Ayano said. "For the sake of our world, I'm getting answers this very night!"

She led her two escorts up a wide flight of stairs and down another well-decorated hallway, past sliding wooden doors and toward the hall's end. Around the corner emerged two patrolling samurai.

"My lady! What are you doing?" one of them demanded. "The prisoners...!"

Ayano didn't say a word. In a whirl of motion, she brought her enchanted katana down to bear on the hapless samurai. With two blunt blows, she sent them crumpling in a clatter of armor.

"Impressive," Azrael said, oddly calm.

"They'll be fine later," Ayano said. "Now, hurry!"

They hid the samurai in a room, shut the door, and proceeded to another set of sliding wooden doors, but these were enchanted.

"Allow me." Azrael focused his blue-black mana onto his left palm and pressed his open hand to the enchantment's smooth, green-white surface. His dark mana spread and seeped into the mana, vaporizing it within a minute. He then slid open the unprotected doors.

Osamu sat at his desk in the room beyond, his back to the intruders. He stood slowly and turned. "My lady," he said darkly, "you should return those prisoners to their cells before I call for your father. Then your punishment would slightly less than severe."

Ayano stomped right into the room, her silky dark hair billowing behind her. "My father won't know about this until I'm ready for him to hear it," she barked. "Osamu! You owe us answers! I watched quietly while you changed my father. Now you've gone too far. _Why_?"

Osamu sneered. "There's no secret, lady Ayano. We live in difficult times, you know. The world is still healing from the devastation of the Kami War! And now those swamp creatures are on the border... forgive me if I take our security seriously."

There was no apology in his tone.

"No." Ayano's voice sounded choked. "You're not you, Osamu! I've known you for years. Something is dreadfully wrong!"

"You're hysterical," Osamu said, now calm. "I'll have you taken to the medical wing for treatment. Until then..." He clapped his hands together.

In a flash of blue mana, a man in a robe-like blue uniform appeared, his head covered by a cloth cowl, save for a narrow gap for his eyes. He had a wooden bokken sword on his back, and a short wakizashi sheathed at his belt. His eyes glinted with deadly professionalism.

A ninja!

Mizuki barely brought her sword into the ready position before the ninja burst into motion. He vaulted over Azrael and positioned himself right into Azrael's blind spot, then delivered a rapid series of strikes that sent Azrael sprawling.

 _Dammit!_ Mizuki swung her sword to slice open the ninja's back, but to her astonishment, the ninja turned around and jumped, landing with one foot on the tip of Mizuki's horizontal sword. He used the moving blade as a springboard to deliver a roundhouse kick that sent Mizuki crashing into a bookshelf. Pain thundered in Mizuki's bones as scrolls and books fell on her.

"Higure! Don't do this!" Ayano brought up her sword to defend herself, but the ninja ducked under her guard and struck with an open-palm attack. Ayano stumbled and fell onto her back.

"Don't get up," Osamu told his three captives. "Higure won't have mercy if you fight back."

Mizuki groaned from her spot on the wooden floor. _That's Higure, the Still Wind! We don't stand a chance! Unless..._

Ayano scowled, then sprang to her feet and swung her sword again.

Higure easily vaulted over the swing and delivered another roundhouse kick. But this time, it connected with a dull thump and had no effect, due to Ayano's suddenly rock-like skin.

Again, Higure struck, but his melee attacks were no use against Ayano's defenses. Green-white mana hummed on her rock-like skin.

 _Now!_ Mizuki scrambled to her feet and leaped at the vulnerable Osamu. She wrapped an arm around him to press him close, and she poised her enchanted blade at the old man's neck.

"Make Higure stand down!" Mizuki shouted. "Now!"

Osamu tensed. "You... despicable child!"

Mizuki retorted by briefly pressing her blade tip against Osamu's neck, searing the skin.

"Damn you!" Osamu wrenched himself free, and Mizuki hastily slashed at him in a panic. Her blade didn't strike the man down, but its red-white enchantment burned off his robes from the waist up.

Osamu stumbled away from Mizuki, bare-chested and breathing hard. "Higure! I've had enough. Strike down the prisoners!" he roared, pointing a finger at Azrael and Mizuki. "Do it!"

Higure tensed to spring, until Ayano seized his wrist with a toughened hand. She clamped down, not letting the ninja go. "Mizuki! On Osamu's back!" Ayano cried.

Mizuki saw it, too: a fist-sized metal contraption on Osamu's spine, fixed in place by eight spider-like legs plated in chrome. Tiny tubes of oil and fibrous muscle were visible between the plates. Osamu's veins were black from the oil.

Azrael sprang to his feet, whirled Osamu around, and tore the Phyrexian device from the man's back.

The spider-like parasite screeched and flailed its legs with metallic clicks, trying to free itself. It went still when Azrael crushed it in his fist.

Osamu sank to his hands and knees.

Higure relaxed in Ayano's grip. "Sir! Osamu! What was..."

Osamu coughed as three more ninjas rushed into the room. He waved them away. "H-Higure... stand down. Now."

Ayano let the ninja go and powered off her defensive enchantments. She sheathed her sword and ran to Osamu's side. "A-are you all right?"

The advisor was slick with sweat, his body shaking. "M-my lady... my deepest apologies. Those creatures... they captured me on my return trip from the Sachiken clan's holdings and implanted that... _thing_. It has controlled my will ever since!"

Ayano nodded. "And my father?"

"It controls him through me," Osamu said hoarsely. "These... Phyrexians, did Azarel call them? They are insidious. They'd control our entire clan and remove it from the front lines and allow the Phyrexian troops to move unopposed!"

Azrael nodded. "The Phyrexians can be patient and crafty," he said. "They must still be in the early stages of their invasion. They don't have the strength right now to conquer this estate, but they soon will, I imagine."

Mizuki powered off her short sword. "I _knew_ something was wrong with Lord Kirinji!"

"You are telling _me_?" Ayano sighed shakily. "Osamu, we have work to do. At once."

"Y-yes." Osamu stood upright and put on a new robe and sleeveless haori coat. "Higure, gather your men and sweep the grounds for any new Phyrexian scout parties. Lady Ayano, escort Azrael and Mizuki to the guest wing. They will be put under guard for their safety and ours."

Ayano nodded. "And my father?"

"The castle priests will purify his mind under my orders and supervision," Osamu said, his voice finally brisk and business-like again. "In the morning, he should be clear of mind, and we can figure out our next move."

Mizuki sighed with relief. _Damn, that was too close._ She allowed two of Higure's ninja subordinates escort her and Azrael to adjacent guest rooms, and she noted that her travel bag had already been brought in. She stuffed her sword into it and sprawled onto the futon bed.

She was asleep in seconds.

*o*o*o*o*

After a quick breakfast, Mizuki and Azrael were once again summoned to daimyo Kirinji's throne room, but this time, with a different air. The place looked warmer and more welcoming.

Lord Kirinji was already seated on his cushion in his gaudy outfit, Ayano and Osamu seated on either side of him. Four of Higure's ninjas stood in a row behind them, hands clasped behind their backs. The usual samurai were lined along the hall's walls, demon masks in place.

"Mizuki. Azrael. What a night it has been," daimyo Kirinji proclaimed. "These Phyrexians... they assumed to remove me from the front lines and trap me in my own mind! I can assure you that a thorough search has been undertaken. Now that we know what to look for, I can guarantee that no more Phyrexian magic or agents are operating on my grounds or in my officials."

The daimyo looked pale and weary, no doubt from whatever purifying ritual the castle priests had put him through. But if it put him back on the right side...

Azrael dipped his head. "I am glad to hear that."

"And what is more," the daimyo said with sudden fury, "the Phyrexians will be made to pay for their transgression! All my warriors are to be mobilized against any incoming assaults, and they shall be there to defend _anyone_ from Phyrexians aggression. Osamu and my daughter counseled me well; I will do my part to prevent our world from falling to the Phyrexians. My scouts will find where they lurk, and we'll exterminate them!"

Ayano beamed. "There is one more thing, father."

Lord Kirinji blinked. "Yes?"

"I wish to go with Azrael and Mizuki."

Mizuki recoiled. "Whoa, what now?"

"Another expedition?" Lord Kirinji asked. "In difficult times like these?"

"You would leave here with us, lady Ayano?" Azrael asked.

Ayano tossed her hair. "I am a daimyo's daughter, _and_ his best operative aside from Higure. You saw me in action; my tough defenses and swordplay make me hard to kill. I can do a lot of good out there; if you two are traveling across Kamigawa to oppose the Phyrexians, I will lend you my aid."

Mizuki glanced away. _Wow, this princess... she ain't no delicate flower!_ She spoke up. "You're totally welcome to join us if you want. Right now, we're tryin' to recruit more people into a... well... into a league against the Phyrexians. We can't let the Phyrexians do a 'divide and conquer' campaign." Something else occured to her. She grinned. "And as a daimyo's daughter, you'd have serious influence, wouldn't you? People would listen to _you_."

Ayano smiled. "Very much so, Mizuki. Father, I believe I am ideal for this job. Our world needs us."

"If lady Ayano is to leave," a new voice added, "I shall be at her beck and call."

Everyone's head turned as Higure, the Still Wind strode into the room. "Her protection is paramount."

"What about the estate's?" Azrael asked. "Lord Kirinji, you're in danger now that the Phyrexians don't control you or Osamu."

Lord Kirinji leaned forward on his seat. "Higure has many tricks at his disposal," he explained. "This castle, and Ayano and I, are three destination points for a teleport spell that Higure can use in a scroll of his. It takes a few days to recharge after use, of course, but it can cross any distance."

"I can call Higure to me with it," Ayano added. "Azrael, Mizuki, we're heading into dangerous territory. I can look after myself... but there are some things that Higure can do that we cannot. We can use him."

Mizuki stared in awe. Everything was moving so fast... "I hardly know what to say. This is..."

"Our duty as denizens of utsushiyo," Ayano said. "And we should make it a priority to find those with a connection to the kami. Many of them have returned to kakuriyo, but we'll have to call them back. We will need their help soon, I expect."

There was a second of silence.

"Then it is settled." The daimyo clapped his hands together. "Ayano, you are free to travel with Mizuki and Azrael on their quest to rally the peoples of Kamigawa against the Phyrexians. You three are to receive whatever supplies you need." His voice became somber. "I wish you the best of fortune."

Mizuki shared a glance with Azrael, and the man nodded. "Thank you," Azrael told the daimyo. "We will set out at our first chance. Time is _not_ on our side."

Indeed.


	10. Chapter 10

**FALL SEVEN TIMES**

 **by Ulquiorra9000**

 **Chapter 10**

So far, the natives of Kamigawa seemed convinced that Radiah's Phyrexian minions had come from the darkest depths of the sprawling, smelly Takenuma Swamp.

Why should they be wrong?

Radiah Albazan sat cross-legged on a centipede-like golem's oily, chrome-plated back, her staff laying across her lap. So far, she'd only used it once or twice to zap away odd creatures or stray kami horrors that got too close to her group. Nearby, four hulking golem cyborgs marched along as Radiah's escorts, their eyeless, toothy faces alert for danger. They already had their huge, hyperdermic needle weapons out and at the ready as they trudged through thick swamp water. Clusters of bamboo reeds and cattails were easily knocked aside.

The siege of Minamo Academy could go on without Radiah's presence for a few days. If she claimed the bounty of the Takenuma Swamp for the cause...!

Grimy bamboo reeds rustled and three nezumi, or rat ninjas, emerged, chittering angrily. They wore black robes and straw sandals, and they waved their ball-and-chain weapons and katanas at Radiah's party as a warning.

Radiah pointed her bone-line staff and charged up the purple lightning spell in its glass sphere at the tip. One jagged, snake-like bolt fried the lead nezumi, frying its chest. The nezumi shrieked and scampered off with its clothes and skin smoking, its two fellows scattering.

The golems chuckled as Radiah set her staff back down. Stupid rats.

Soft, eerie orange light glowed up ahead, shining through the tall, leafless swamp trees. Radiah smiled as her party passed by crumbling tombstones, each etched with names in the Kamigawa script. Ornate lanterns hung from short chains on the bone-like tree branches, and Radiah racked her brains. She'd heard that in local history, many samurai had died invading the swamp, and their spirits were calmed only by their names carved in stone and the warm lantern light.

Nice place.

One of the golems grunted something in the bizarre Phyrexian language.

"Don't worry. This means we're getting close," Radiah assured the golem. She idly tapped her fingernails on her staff's porcelain plating. "Any second now -"

The clop of horse hooves brought Radiah's head up. Two samurai in black armor approached on gray horses, each wielding guan-dao weapons (a long rod tipped with a curved blade). Each samurai's helmet had two cruel, pointed horns, and their eyes glowed purple.

"Intruders!" one rasped. "Daimyo Yokuda will _not_ let you leave alive!" He expertly twirled his guan-dao above his head, and the weapon's blade hissed in the humid swamp air.

Radiah shrugged and pointed. "Get 'em."

Two of her golem escorts crouched, then sprang with surprising speed. They tackled the two samurai off their horses and stabbed their needles into the men's hearts.

The samurai wailed as their horses whinnied and bolted. The golems backed away, and the samurai staggered back to their feet, their veins black with oil. Loose oil slopped from their wounds, but the blessings of Phyresis would keep the men alive and functional. The wounds would seal up as the men became _compleat,_ anyway.

"Take me to your daimyo," Radiah said. "He's a powerful lord around here, right?"

"Yes," the other samurai said vaguely, his mind no doubt fuzzy from the Phyrexian oil coursing through it. "He is _Seimei no atae-te_ , the giver of life. Come."

Radiah beamed and got her party moving. The two samurai led them right to a towering, narrow castle nearby, half-hidden by the vine-laden trees. It was almost like a single turret, being much taller than wide and having no side wings. Instead, windows glowed with orange light, and anti-intruder charms hung from the eaves of the ornate roof.

The two samurai waved their hands, a black spell on their palms. "Security override," one explained. "Follow us into the reception hall."

Radiah dismounted and didn't stop until she stood in the tall castle's main hall, where banners hung from the ceiling and more wicked samurai stood guard along the walls. They nodded in deference as Radiah's two samurai escorts brought her to the waiting lord.

"Who is this?" the daimyo roared. He was a large, beefy man with a short black beard and a topknot of hair. He wore dark green robes and a black, sleeveless haori coat and silver necklaces.

"Me? I'm Radiah Albazan, a priestess of the Machine Orthodoxy," the woman said, stridng toward the waiting daimyo, her high-heeled boots loud on the wooden floor. She tossed her blonde hair and raised her staff. "And you're daimyo Yokuda, right? The 'giver of life'?"

The daimyo snarled. "Men! Why have you brought this wench to me? She shows no respect!" He pounded his knee with a fist, and his detainers winced.

Radiah pointed her staff at daimyo Yokuda. "No need to hide what I am. What a disgraceful idea, a high priestess like me, cowering behind excuses and disguises! Show me what you can do, daimyo Yokuda. I hear it's impressive."

Daimyo Yokuda bared his teeth. "Men! Kill her!"

The samurai along the walls drew their katanas -

Radiah's four golems burst into the room and joined the two oil-controlled samurai, forming a protective ring around their priestess.

The samurai faltered at the sight of the burly golem cyborgs and their huge needles. "My lord!" one cried. "What are they -"

"Fools!" Daimyo Yokuda sprang to his feet with considerable effort and raised a hand. "I'll do this myself!"

Black mana gathered at his palm and filled the room.

An obisdian-skinned humanoid swelled to full size and towered to the ceiling, nearly forty feet high. Its long, muzzle-like face leered down at Radiah's party, its four red eyes shining with fury. Its fingers ended in long white claws, and chains of paper charms wrapped around its chest like an X. Purple orbs of mana floated around it like flies, hovering in place.

"This is Akuta-Ne, the Iron Skin," daimyo Yokuda boasted. "Do you see, priestess Radiah? I subdued the local ogre clan and assumed control of their demon lord! You think you can bully _me_?"

Radiah's smile returned. Perfect! This buffoon Yokuda was absurdly easy to rile, and now he dangled the prize right in front of her face! How she coveted that power...

Akuta-Ne roared and threw out an open plam, intending to squish Radiah's party where it stood.

Radiah's machine implants screamed a warning, and the priestess was already moving. She and her fellows easily leaped out of the way, and the whole castle shook as the demon's open palm slammed against the wooden floor, cracking it. The samurai braced themselves and covered their face with their arms.

Radiah, meanwhile, ran up the demon's arm and climbed onto its shoulder, sitting comfortably on its hard, dark skin. "I like you," she told it casually. "How'd you like to work for me?"

Akuta-Ne grunted and reached up to swat the _compleat_ human off its shoulder.

"Now, now." Radiah jabbed her staff's glass orb into one of Akuta-Ne's eyes and channeled its full power.

The demon yowled as streams of purple lightning raced into its brain through the optic nerve. It seized its head and whined, until it suddenly understood.

 _Obey the Phyrexians!_

Radiah removed her staff and pointed. "Do it."

Akuta-Ne threw out its palm and flattened daimyo Yokuda into a bloody pulp.

Giver of life, he was called. The irony!

One by one, the samurai knelt to their new master. They didn't even resist as Radiah's golems jabbed their needles into their hearts to convert them.

Meanwhile, Radiah climbed down Akuta-Ne's arm and landed heavily on her feet. "Deploy the machines," she told her golems. "The swamp water doesn't flow as fast as the streams, but it'll carry the oil just fine. Tomorrow, I'll bring over a tidemaker beast to speed things up."

The golems nodded, grunted directions to each other in the Phyrexian language, and lumbered outside.

Radiah sighed with content and headed upstairs in her new castle. She wasn't one to settle down, but hey, daimyo Yokuda might have all kinds of goodies in his private stores!

Radiah's staff swung this way and that as she knocked out random servants she encountered, her staff's spell converting their minds with each blow. Radiah found her way into the daimyo's wife's room, a lovely bedchamber loaded with expensive silk kimonos, boxes of jewelry, and a cluttered desk.

 _Not much useful in here. Oh well._ Still, Radiah took a second to catch her reflection in a tall vanity mirror, She smiled and toyed with a lock of her blonde hair with her gloved fingers. There was no one on Kamigawa who could resist her for long. No one!

Not even the two planeswalkers she had heard rumors about through her spy network. They promised to be interesting...

*o*o*o*o*

Warm Akoum air whipped Zoira's braided ponytails around as she soared over the rocky terrain, her phoenix's claws snugly holding her shoulders as it flew. Around her, two dozen assorted kor, humans, and even two Gul Draaz vampires glided on their kitesails. The contraptions' wood and leather frames creaked from the wind, their fabric rippling in the rapid air.

Just another scouting mission. No big deal, right?

Creeks of lava lazily flowed about a hundred feet below, and towering rocky hills and cliffs to the west partially blocked the early evening sun. An active volcano oozed its glowing orange contents, and elemental dogs with long snouts scampered along the lava streams, lapping it up like milk.

Zoira hadn't seen a thing all day, which was certainly a good thing! The Eldrazi broods were still to be found here and there, but the Zendikar coalition had done a fine job mopping up after the fall of Kozilek and Ulamog. Sea Gate was still a lost cause, but other settlements and refugee camps were holding out. Excellent. Good news was like a healing balm for these people.

From a secure pouch on her utility belt, Zoira drew a bracelet and slipped it onto her left wrist. Its thin, ornately carved body was refined chrome, but it had a round sapphire built into its body, surrounded by gold and vein-like Etherium filaments.

Not for the first time, Zoira felt tears burn in the corner of her eyes as she ran her fingers along the bracelet's cool surface. After returning Veldor's body to Esper, his cousin, Olivia, had unearthed this particular bracelet in a workshop in Cae'Xan University. That particular evening, after the funeral, Olivia had tearfully given it to Zoira for safekeeping. It was a protective charm.

Actually, it was _supposed_ to be. But Veldor had never gotten around to installing an enchantment matrix, as Olivia had explained, and he alone would know the formula and incantation. It was just a mundane bracelet from another world, nothing more. An unfinished project.

But just _wearing_ it made Zoira feel safer. And watched over.

Damn, it was tough fighting for the planeswalker Code without him...

A projectile hissed through the air like a dart.

The kitesailers shouted a warning that snapped Zoira back to the present.

Down on the ground, near a lava creek, a huge Kozilek-brood Eldrazi steadily fired missiles from its eyeless head, projectiles like oversized spearheads. The kitesailers worked the levers and ropes of their equipment and banked and rolled to evade the missiles, but a kor was too slow and took a missile to the chest. It went straight through him in a blast of blood and bone.

"Get down there! We're exposed up here!" Zoira roared. On her command, the kitesailers dived at the anti-air Eldrazi in formation, some charging up spells and others drawing their weapons.

Zoira soared down on her phoenix, preparing to roast the Eldrazi... but lesser Eldrazi emerged from the ground, goblin-like bipeds with tentacles on their bodies and skull-like heads.

Ulamog and Kozilek brood drones working together. This wasn't a first.

Zoira pointed, and her phoenix issued a long, thin jet of flame that roved over the lesser drones. Several of them vanished in grimy puffs of flesh and vapor, but the survivors spat out smaller darts, too rapidly to dodge. Another kitesailer went down, and another.

"Stay together! Take out the big one!" Zoira finally got close, and she landed on the ground as her phoenix continued its course. The bird swatted the big Eldrazi's head with a flaming wing, searing its flesh and knocking it off-balance for a few precious seconds.

Three kor threw oversized hooks on long chains, and these weapons pinned the huge Eldrazi in place, preventing escape. This gave the two vampires enough time to land, extend their arms, and channel their dark magic.

Mingled red and black mana shot from the vampires' palms in a grim vortex, and the huge Eldrazi wailed as the spells drained its life force. The drone scuffed the rocky ground with its clawed feet, but it was helpless; the vampires hissed in satisfaction as they absorbed the last of the drone's life essence. The drone's withered husk collapsed and fell into the nearby lava stream.

The human warriors sliced apart the lesser drones one by one with their swords and pole-axes, and the few survivors drew back, cornered by a lava stream. They chittered angrily among themselves.

Zoira made a grim smile as she raised her hand, recalling her phoenix to her position. "Finish 'em off," she told her bird, "and we can be back in time for dinner." Her fellows chuckled with satisfaction.

The very earth quaked, and in a blast of rocks and dirt, two massive Ulamog drones emerged, easily twenty feet tall. Their brawny, pale purple arms flexed their sinewy muscles, and their many tentacles wriggled across the ground. Their blank, skull-like heads leered at Zoira's party with impunity (or so it seemed. They had no real faces to read).

One of them whipped out a long tentacle that grew in length with surprising speed. The flailing tendril knocked half of Zoira's party to the ground, and the small drones converged on them, hoping to feast on them.

"NO!" Zoira sent out her phoenix, and with a flap of its flaming wings, it conjured a wave of searing air that knocked the drones into the lava stream. The little drones were vaporized in an eyeblink.

Zoira growled as the two Ulamog mega-drones towered over her. These were going to be some tough sons of bitches to handle!  
 _Mizuki, Azrael, forgive me. Looks like I'm not done here yet... just hang on._


	11. Chapter 11

**FALL SEVEN TIMES**

 **by Ulquiorra9000**

 **Chapter 11**

"...in short, I believe that these terms will ensure your swift return to the Kirinji clan's employment," Ayano was saying, three days after leaving daimyo Kirinji's castle and trekking across the forested hills. "My father is most gracious, yes?"

Mizuki stood with Azrael behind Ayano's back, watching tensely as the noble lady negotiated a mercenary band's re-hiring to her father. The trio was in yet another town, and like many of those towns, it had a mercenary and assassin recruitment building. There was no end to demand for sell-sword ronin (masterless samurai), rat ninjas, rogue wizards, and war beast trainers. The Kami War had created the demand, and even after that war's conclusion, Kamigawa's feudal lords and bandit kings quickly resumed their time-honored ways of battling over land, resources, and honor.

Typical.

The mercenary commander, a samurai with a grizzled brown beard and the character for "steel" tattooed over his left eye, cracked a crooked grin. He turned to his fellows, and his red and yellow armor creaked. "Hear that, fellas? 25% extra! And first claim on war booty!"

The others cheered and raised their drinking gourds to the generous new terms.

"Well bargained and done," Ayano said, bowing politely.

The commander bowed his head. "Lookin' forward to it, little lady. If you'll pardon me, I've gotta get my drink on..." He lumbered off and joined his comrades at one of several round tables in the building's lantern-lit hall, and he hailed one of the kitsune waitresses for a large order.

Ayano's face was like a mask as she motioned for her fellows to join her. With a swish of her green travel robes, she stalked out of the recruitment hall and into the town's cool twilight air.

"Well done," Azrael said as he and Mizuki followed Ayano down the dirt road, past wandering merchants, monks, and horse-drawn wagons. "I believe that is the fourth ronin band that you've rallied to our cause?"

Ayano broke into a wide smile. "It certainly is, Azrael. Shinga's Bladehunters is a small group, but tough. They've endured trials that have wiped out larger bands. They helped my father fight off kami intruders from the Sokenzan Mountains, and they'll do so against the Phyrexian threat."

Mizuki nodded silently. It was great to see those tough-as-nails samurai pledge themself to daimyo Hiroshi Kirinji, but the Phyrexians were spreading by the hour, and Mizuki kept thinking of the increasing number of refugee camps her party had passed during their trek. Scarred survivors, mute with terror and incomprehension at the Phyrexian menace... they had huddled around campfires outside their patchy tents, staring at Ayano as though she were their personal savior.

Well, Ayano _could_ rally men to the cause, but everyone would suffer in the meantime. It couldn't be helped, after all. More towns and villages were falling to the Phyrexians, and soon, the major cities, too. Bands of _compleat_ cyborgs roamed the landscape, often blocking Mizuki's path, forcing her, Azrael, and Ayano to hide like rats while oil flowed in every river and stream -

"Mizuki," Ayano said gently. "Are you all right?"

Mizuki jumped and forced a smile. "Sure, sure..."

Ayano tossed her hair. "Good, because this place should make for good lodgings tonight. Come."

She led Azrael and Mizuki into a typical ryokan, and she paid for two rooms. Mizuki settled into her and Ayano's shared room and prepared to tuck herself into her futon bed, but Ayano had other ideas.

Within moments, the noble lady had brought Azrael into her room and seated him at the table.

Well.

"Is something the matter?" Azrael asked politely.

Ayano sat opposite him at the table, all smiles. She folded her hands in her lap. "We haven't had much time to talk since we started this voyage, have we?"

Azrael shook his head.

Ayano hummed to herself and poured two cups of jasmine tea while Mizuki watched with amusement from her futon. "I propose we change that, my good sir." She took a tip of hot tea.

"If you like." Azrael took a drink, too. He looked around the room. "Kamigawa hospitality continues to impress. When I first arrived here, Mizuki brought me to a ryokan like this in Juka-no-Nadachi. A pleasant place."

Ayano eyed Azrael over the lip of her teacup, and she went pink. "Yes, speaking of which... I'm positively _eager_ to hear about your other travels, Azrael. I can hardly contain myself! You really hail from another world? Besides utsushiyo, or kakuriyo?"

Mizuki cracked a grin. This was Morrel all over again...

"I come from Dominaria," Azrael said, "and the island nation of Ezig Natum. It is no more, but I remember it fondly."

Ayano was seated like a proper Kamigawa lady, but she was positively bouncing in place with excitement. "Yes? Do tell more! What is this world, Dominaria?"

"It... fell to the Phyrexians. It's a dying wasteland," Azrael said bitterly. Then he brightened. "But before that, it flourished with wonders. Tolaria Academy taught artifice and time magic to the brightest minds, the volcanic island of Shiv had wild beauty and dragon overlords watching its skies, the noble druids of the Krosan Forest... I once visited the Benalish kingdom and witnessed its vast army. The people lived in peace as those battalions watched over them."

Ayano sighed with delight and tok another sip of tea. "Living in peace... I have never known that. The people of utsushiyo feuded endlessly, and then the kami invaded, and now the so-called Phyrexians... what I wouldn't give to see what that peaceful world was like."

Azrael smiled easily. "There _are_ sanctuaries of peace and community across the other worlds, you see. The kingdom of Thune on a plane named Shandalar ensures security to its citizens thanks to its many noble knights, and the kingdoms of Bant thrive on order and honor above all else."

Ayano made a delighted noise. "And you have the power to visit _all_ these places?"

"I am a planeswalker, like Mizuki," Azrael said, puffing out his chest. "A rare gift that lets me see the entire Multiverse and all its peoples and wonders."

Ayano held her face in her hands. "Such beauty existed all this time... and I didn't know!"

"It's understandable," Azrael said gently. "It's also a burden, knowing all that..."

"I don't think I would mind at all," Ayano said. "If only I could travel to these planes with you..."

Mizuki groaned. _Get a room,_ she thought, then realized that they already had one. Whoops.

Ayano turned. "Mizuki, are you all right?"

"S-sure." Mizuki made a face. "But believe me, us planeswalkers can't take along guests."

"You took that Morrel boy with you," Azrael reminded her.

"Well... that was different," Mizuki said slowly.

Ayano perked up. "Who is that?"

"A battlemage boy my age from Bant," Mizuki said fondly. She felt her face warm at the thought of him, his noble strength, his easy smile, how he would hold her close... "Nothin' special."

"I can tell otherwise," Ayano said slyly. "Tell me more!"

Mizuki glanced at Azrael, who gave her a quick nod. She sat upright in her futon. "Okay, princess, sit back and listen to _this_..."

And she laid it all out: the curse of Haijin-no-Imari, Mizuki's trek to Bant to find refuge, meeting Morrel in that burning town, her encounter with Azrael in Haijin-no-Imari's castle, meeting Zoira and Veldor, Lorwyn, Innistrad, Tarkir, Esper... and the horror of Nihil and his cunning mission to steal the Sphaera Vitae and donate its power to his Phyrexian overlords on a distant plane.

Ayano stood transfixed as Mizuki finished the story. "Incredible," she breathed. "Enemies becoming allies, once they see the true evil..." She shuddered. "These Phyrexians... I can see why you both are so driven to stop them. Even you, Azrael, who's not native to my world."

"If not us, who?" Mizuki said simply.

Ayano ran her hands through her silky hair. "And Morrel and that Zoira lady cannot help us?"

"Morrel ain't a planeswalker, so he can't come here," Mizuki said bitterly. "And without Haijin-no-Imari's curse, my Spark isn't mutated and can't carry a passenger like I used to do. And Zoira is fightin' different enemies on her world of Zendikar. But she might join us later. Hard to say."

Ayano nodded. "They sound like wonderful people." Then a sly smile crossed her face. "This Morrel boy is precious to you, isn't he, Mizuki?"

"Wh-what -" Mizuki felt her face go red and she sputtered. "How d'you -"

"It's so easy to read," Ayano said with a broad smile. "I wish I could meet him. You're a strong and impressive girl, Mizuki. No ordinary boy could capture your heart like that."

Mizuki felt her heart race, and she relented. She cracked an awkward smile. "Yeah, you got me there. I love him. He'd done more for me than anyone would. We've saved each other's lives, y'know. I wouldn't let anyone ever hurt him."

Ayano tossed her hair. "It's our job to find such noble strength on Kamigawa and turn it against our foes. In time, it _shall_ be done."

"I concur." Azrael raised his tea mug. "We shall _not_ falter or lose our way."

With that, Azrael got up, bid the two girls goodnight, and explained that he wanted time to meditate and think over "several matters" in the privacy of his room, so he did just that. As soon as he left Mizuki and Ayano's room, Ayano shut the room's sliding door and turned to Mizuki, her face pink.

"Your friend Azrael..." she started.

Mizuki tensed. "Yeah? What about him?"

Ayano smiled again. "I don't meet enough men like him..."

"Oh, honey." Mizuki groaned again and ran her hands down her face in exasperation. "Trust me, he ain't lookin' for a girlfriend right now. Not with all he's gone through, and what's goin' on now."

"I understand." Ayano hung her head, her face downcast.

Mizuki relented. "But I don't blame you," she said with a sly grin. "He's easy on the eyes, huh? And it doesn't hurt that he's got some _serious_ abs."

Ayano chuckled behind her hand. "Oh, my."

Mizuki settled back down in her futon as Ayano unrolled her own bedding. "Y'know," Mizuki said idly, resting her head on her hands and staring at the ceiling, "you're a pretty great gal yourself. Got a bunch of suitors?"

" _So_ many." Ayano settled into her bed. "Inter-clan politics are a complicated and delicate affair where pre-planned marriages have far-reaching effects that -"

"Point taken." Mizuki snorted. "In _my_ village, if you like a boy, you just go up and _tell_ him. Doesn't hurt to make him a nice dinner and play coy, either." She grinned; she and her sister Hana had been on _that_ adventure a few times.

Ayano chuckled again. "Country life seems refreshingly rustic and practical. Having wealth and power comes with _many_ burdens."

"Hey, I knew a lot of people who'd make that trade."

Ayano gasped. "I didn't mean to complain...!"

"Don't worry, I know what you mean. Relax."

Mizuki flexed her toes under her covers, her mind restless. "Growing up, I used to resent the feuding nobles and their rich-as-hell families. I hated the thought of noble kids growing up with all that stuff! But you know what, I like you. You ain't got your head up your arse like some aristocrats do."

Ayano recoiled. "What a vulgar -"

Mizuki smiled again. "Never heard that before?"

"N-no." Ayano shook her head. "What, does it mean to hide your eyes from the world's troubles by reaching your head into... your..."

"You catch on quick, Ayano."

" _I_ was never encouraged to be ignorant," Ayano said forcefully. "I visited every acre of my father's holdings, met the people, saw their lives... and whatever hardships they faced. Especially near other clans' borders, or along bandit-frequented trade routes. And the Kami War brought in refugees every day from all over. I _personally_ -"

"Fed and nurtured the survivors of kami attacks?" Mizuki said gently.

"Mmmmm. Yes. I'm not an expert healer like the kitsune clerics, but my green-white mana can manifest in other ways than my defensive spells." Ayano's eyes spat fire. "Being a daimyo's daughter means being _responsible_ for lives, not just taxin them."

Mizuki giggled. "I get it, I get it! You're a nice gal. Really, I mean that. You'd love Bant."

Ayano toyed with a strand of her hair. "Bant... that's the home world of your boyfriend?"

"Sure is. I met him there." Mizuki narrowed her eyes in thought. "Morrel lives in the Akrasa kingdom, but there were others, like Eos and Valeron. They were fighting for their lives against the Grixis and Jund invaders."

"Are those like the kami?"

Mizuki laughed. "No way, sugar. Ever seen a giant zombie mutant eat someone alive? Or a dragon roast a whole village in one pass? That's the kind of bullshit that Morrel and his friends had to deal with. He never wavered, especially not when I helped him."

Mizuki humphed. "Enough about that. Morrel told me stories... Bantians hold tournaments of skill and bravado, defending one's honor and nation against another nation's champion. Those guys would earn sigils for their deeds and stuff. Morrel never got one, but he told me how he'd revere people who _did_ get them, like his big brother Raphael."

"A sigil? A medallion of honor and accomplishment?" Ayano asked. She smiled. "That's wonderful, a society that rewards such things."

"As far as I knew, Morrel had never even _shoplifted_ ," Mizuki added. "Crazy, huh? He'd never hurt a fly... unless it insulted his honor!"

Both girls laughed.

"As the daimyo's daughter, I exist outside the Kirinji clan's system of ranks, promotions, and combat decorations," Ayano explained. "It would be redundant anyway, because I'd award them to myself! Honoring my father's warriors is one of my duties. Why, just last year, the tai-cho of the fourth combat platoon led his men to victory against a ronin force twice their size, and in unfamiliar territory! He saved hundreds of lives by driving the ronin out. For that, I gave him the Rising Moon medal." She smiled. "I remember him in his dress robes, bowing his head as I slipped it over his neck. He didn't say it, but I'm sure he was thinking to himself 'I'd do it again for my lady Ayano Hatsumoto Kirinji'. It made me so happy to think about."

"Nice story," Mizuki said, then she made an annoyed noise. "Wow, that's your full name? What a mouthful."

"What of it?" Ayano said primly. "Did you expect any different?"

"Well... no." Mizuki huffed. "Makes my own name sound so dull. _Mizuki_. Like, peasant Mizuki. Little Mizuki."

"Nonsense. I think it's a beautiful name. Isn't it written as 'beautiful moon'?"

"Sure it is." Mizuki had certainly learned how to write the characters for her own name. She traced them on the foor next to her with her finger.

"It's a lovely name," Ayano insisted. "Aren't you proud of it?"

Mizuki couldn't help a grin. "Sure, I guess. How's _your_ name written?"

"The characters can be written as 'possessing color', among other variations. My middle name is sometimes written has 'sparkling stream', or 'clear creek'."

"Mmmmm. Fancy."

Mizuki decided not to remind Ayano that the Phyrexians were using Kamigawa's water systems to spread their noxious oil.

"And what of Azrael?" Ayano asked.

"Huh?"

"His name, his family name, all of that."

"I... dunno." Mizuki tried to recall her idle chats with Azrael across Kamigawa. "He didn't say much about it. His home culture is, _was_ different than ours. And by what he's told me, different nations and species lived on Dominaria, all with different ways of life. I couldn't tell you what 'Azrael' means. It could mean... uh... 'bearer of manure' for all I know!"

Ayano burst out laughing, and the next door neighbor knocked on the wall to shut her up. "I certainly hope that's not so," she chuckled. "I imagine something more stately. 'Defender of hope' or something to that effect."

"Well, that's what he's _tryin'_ to be, against the Phyrexians," Mizuki commented.

"Indeed. A noble man."

Ayano blew out her lantern and the room fell into darkness. Crickets chirped outside and Mizuki heard someone walking through the ryokan's hallways on heavy feet.

"Mizuki?" came Ayano's voice a moment later.

Mizuki grunted and rolled over to find a more comfy position.

"Are we... friends?"

Mizuki grinned. "Sure, hon. Good friends."

"I'm glad."

Especially since Ayano was one hell of a fighter for a noble gal...


	12. Chapter 12

**FALL SEVEN TIM ES**

 **by Ulquiorra9000**

 **Chapter 12**

Mizuki, having grown up in a small town in the Jukai Forest, was always used to the towering trees over her and the scent of tree sap, rotting logs, and damp soil. But she _wasn't_ used to seeing kami dancing and swirling through the air!

"What a remarkable place," Azrael said lightly as the trio hiked into the forest's edge and into the sylvan realm. He looked everywhere, his brown eyes wide with curiosity.

"I've never seen anything like this," Mizuki admitted. She hoisted her backpack a little higher up, hanging onto the leather straps. She wasn't used to carrying this many provisions on her back.

Ayano tossed her silky hair. "I've heard stories of this from decades past, but the kami war interrupted the cycles."

"Cycles of what?" Azrael asked gently.

Ayano smiled. "The cycles of the kami's lessons to mortals, told in song and dance." She spread her arms wide. "It's called Bukodan Utsu Miyago, or the 'dance of mortal lessons'. The monks of the Jukai Forest worship the lesser kami, who in return spread enlightenment to mortals in the forest and beyond. It used to be such a wonderful thing before the kami war. And now, it returns!"

The combined singing voices of the small kami seemed to swell in an ethereal chorus as Mizuki hiked deeper into the forest. Everywhere, like schools of glowing fish, the kami raced through the tree branches and soared near the forest canopy, some in clusters, others in streams like colorful water. All the while, they sang, giggled, and instructed. And just as many forest denizens were out and about, arms held wide as though to touch the kami, faces in awe.

The largest forest kami in the scene, over five feet wide, hovered over a village up ahead, and its single, blue eye looked down at Mizuki's party as the three humans approached. [Well, look what we have here. Travelers!] the kami said, its wide mouth barely moving as it spoke.

Children in the village shrieked and laughed as they chased each other and the kami teachers around the village, and their parents merely smiled and waved, or else knelt in prayer, asking for the kami's enlightenment. Everyone: tanners, hunters, jewelers, woodworkers, and even the town guards were equally reverent, all humbled.

Ayano held up a hand to halt Mizuki and Azrael in the village's center, near the hovering kami. "Blessed kami, infinite is your wisdom," Ayano intoned. She clapped her hands together and bowed her head. "We bask in the dance cycle today, and ask only one thing of you."

Mizuki hastily imitated Ayano's prayer. It had been years since she had prayed to the kami; the kami war had still been in full effect during her childhood. Only a few forest kami had been friendly to the mortal races then. Now, they all were!

The kami, a spherical creature with skin like woven straw, chuckled. It had random, many-jointed arms with glowing green skin, and several blue orbs of mana hovered around it like worshipers. The kami's huge blue eye studied Mizuki's party carefully. [You are not native to this area, are you?] it asked.

Ayano bowed her head deeper. "No, lord kami. I am Ayano Hatsumoto Kirinji, scion of the Kirinji clan. I represent a growing coalition that opposes the foul invaders. I humbly ask for your guid -"

Mizuki jumped in alarm as the many tiny kami scattered in terror, screeching in fright. The collective noise was like fingers on a chalkboard multiplied by a thousand!

Azrael clapped his hands over his ears. "Should we leave?" he cried. "We seem to have upset them."

Ayano shook her head, wincing at the ruckus. "No! We need this! Stay where you are, please."

Meanwhile, the large, spherical kami bobbed in the air, its arms pulsing with shades of red, its hovering blue mana orbs fizzling in anger. [The invaders!] the kami roared. [Damn them! Metal thralls of oil and greed and waste! I have seen them... felt them! Everywhere! They desecrate the forests even as we speak!]

Mizuki jumped back when the kami's skin split into hundreds of tendrils that pierced random trees and spots on the ground. Nearby, the villagers fled into their huts and tents.

"What is it doing?" Azrael asked tentatively.

"Feeling the world," Ayano explained. She grinned sheepishly. "At least, I _believe_ that's what it's doing."

The kami rumbled in its throat and quickly retracted its straw-like tendrils, which re-folded themselves over its skin. [This was a place of merriment,] it scolded Ayano. It hovered closer, its huge blue eye cose to her face. [And you speak of the invaders!]

"I know that you know there're at work," Ayano said, drawing herself to her full height. She didn't back down from the kami, even if it pressed itself dangerously close to her. "I mean no disrespect to your performance of Bukodan Utsu Miyago. But I need the aid of the kami and their mortal followers. In which direction may I find it?" Tears welled in her eyes. "Please. I have nearly lost people I love to those invaders. All of Kamigawa will suffer soon."

Mizuki held her breath as the kami studied her, its arms flexing, the fingers twitching on its humanoid hands. As it pondered this, some of the smaller kami gathered around it, speaking to it in tiny, squeaky voices.

[I live only for the dance, and the lessons it brings,] the straw-skinned kami finally said. It floated back to a safe distance. [I fight no wars, shed no blood. And I am no patron of warriors. But in the face of adversity, wisdom and patience have their place. And humility. For the sake of finding these things, I will guide you. But for no other reason.]

"Thank you, lord kami!" Ayano fell to her hands and knees in a deep bow. "I ask no more than that."

The straw-skinned kami waved a hand, and half of the tiny kami zoomed into position, forming a glowing trail out of town and deeper into the forest. Their voices chattered encouragement to Ayano and the others.

Mizuki broke into a huge smile. "Whoa! That's a neat trick!"

She gasped when a tiny, dragonfly-like kami swatted her on the nose. [It's no trick!] the kami said defensively. [It's our guidance to you!]

"Uh..." Mizuki blurted.

Azrael held his hands in prayer. "Thank you, all of you, for this aid. We will be on our way."

Ayano sprang to her feet and led her fellows down the glowing path. She was almost jogging in her haste to follow the divine guidance.

"Mizuki," Azrael said as they jogged down the path, "the kami did not seem to appreciate you that much..."

Mizuki made a face. "Whatever! They're temperamental, okay? You never know what they're gonna take offense to."

"Don't worry about it," Ayano told them both. "I shall speak on my father's behalf. All right?"

Mizuki shrugged. "Lead the way, then."

Ayano didn't stop until the path of kami led up a hill, and the three of them climbed wide stone steps and past stone lanterns that stood by the staircase. The air felt... denser, somehow.

"Where are we?" Azrael asked, panting for breath.

Mizuki smiled. "Oh, _this_ should be good..."

The three of them passed under a large torii gate painted red, and the stone path led right to a large shrine. The stone and wood building could easily hold a hundred people in its halls, but Mizuki knew better than to try and go inside right now. The budoka monks had to allow you in first.

And they'd kick your ass pretty hard if you tried to force your way in!

Behind her, Mizuki watched as the glowing kami scattered and dissolved the path. Meanwhile, different kami caught Mizuki's attention. Some where shaped like deer or bears, but their spiritual nature was given away by colorful fur, extra limbs, or the divine spheres of mana hovering around them. One such bear spirit lumbered forth and sniffed Azrael's arm. The man jumped back.

"Relax, Azrael," Mizuki told him with a grin. "It ain't gonna bite your face off. It just wants to say hi."

"Oh?" Azrael stopped and held out an open hand as though to feed the spirit bear. The kami licked his palm once, blinked, and turned and lumbered away.

Azrael resumed walking with the girls. "What did _that_ mean?"

"It meant," Mizuki said, "that you're welcome."

The monks said much the same.

Mizuki had heard stories of the budoka monks, but she'd never seen one before. All men, they shaved their heads bald except a long, braided black ponytail. Most of them were slender men in fancy red and orange robes, but a few were shirtless and massive, built like brawlers and with curly black tattoos along one half of their bodies. All of them carried wooden staves, each with a large gold ring at one end. Eight smaller rings hung from each large ring.

"I am brother Katsu," one massive monk said, his voice oddly high-pitched and soft as he blocked Ayano's way with his bulk. Really, he was like a wall of muscle. He clapped his hands together, and green mana pulsed faintly between his fingers.

Ayano returned the gesture. "I am Ayano Hatsumoto Kirinji, scion of -"

"No need," Katsu said kindly, lowering his hands. "Namabuntai told me."

"Who?" Mizuki blurted.

Katsu smiled. "The conductor of this region's dance troupe. You met him at that village, remember? He was generous enough to show you the way here to our temple."

"Oh," was all Mizuki could say.

More monks gathered around. "I am the senior monk here," Katsu explained. "I lead the prayers to keep Namabuntai's dance troup in our region of the Jukai Forest so they may enlighten everyone here. It seems that you agitated him by reminding him of the invaders' conquest."

 _Well, it ain't doing any good to ignore the problem!_ Mizuki thought hotly, but she kept her yapper shut. Better to let Ayano handle things. Azrael was similarly silent.

Brother Katsu rubbed his chin. "I can see a look in your eyes, lady Kirinji. This is no small favor you ask, is it?"

Ayano shook her head.

Katsu sat cross-legged and motioned for everyone else to do the same. "Tell me more."

So Ayano told him _everything_. Azrael hailed from another world entirely to aid the people of Kamigawa, Ayano explained, and although Mizuki could flee to another world in peace, she chose to stay and fight for her homeland. Kamigawa was not the only world in existence; the agents of New Phyrexia were on the march, and had crossed the blind eternities to claim Kamigawa as their own. Why _this_ world, no one could explain. But the Phyrexians were here. And they wouldn't listen to pleas for mercy.

It felt odd to Mizuki, repeatedly exposing the truth of the Multiverse and planeswalking and the Phyrexians to everyone. But how else to convey the gravity of the situation? Some other planewalkers she'd met had told her about the unofficial rule to not go around blabbing these truths to ordinary people on the planes. But to hell with that!

Katsu and the other budoka monks listened silently, not even giving any thoughts away on their faces as Ayano laid it all down. At the end of her speech, Ayano nervously fiddled with her robe. "I... I can ask no more or less than your aid against the Phyrexians," she said at last. "Based on my party's observations, they cannot taint or take control of the kami. Therefore, the kami will be essential to our defense. Please..." She leaned forward, still seated before the massive Katsu. "I need you."

Mizuki waited with bated breath for the monks' response. Nearby, a breeze rustled the trees and a spirit bear sat down, scratching an itch on its head. Birds chirped unseen in the tree branches.

"No," Katsu said.

Mizuki bolted to her feet, her heart racing in fury. "Now, what the hell -!" she started.

One of the slender monks pointed his staff, and its rings glowed with green mana. Leafy vines emerged from between the stones in the pathway and bound themselves to Mizuki's arms and legs. The bindings forced her back to a sitting position.

 _Dammit!_ Mizuki tugged against her restraints, but they didn't yield. She froze. What to do? Would the monks attack her and drive her party from the temple's grounds?

The bindings released her.

"No anger," the monk said, lowering his staff. "No arguing. No wrath."

Mizuki stared. These monks were even more strict than she'd imagined!

Katsu cleared his throat. "Lady Ayano, the spirits do not think like you and I do. And what is more, they are concerned with only the purposes they were born to carry out. Namabuntai leads his dance troupe to educate the people of the Jukai Forest. Many other kami have specific roles as well, often only blessing various artisans or scholars or poets in their work. They will not fight the Phyrexian invaders."

Ayano opened and closed her mouth. "Brother Katsu, the war kami are dangerous and unpredictable! I can't ask _them_ for help. At least, not alone. The kami of the forest are wise and connected to all of utsushiyo. With their help, my coalition could have a fundamental advantage. We could create a communication network that spans the very earth! And all of nature would aid the warriors fighting for my father. And their wisdom..."

Katsu shook his head. "What you describe would require a war-like mind among the forest kami, which does not exist." He cracked a grin. "At least, not _most_ of them."

Azrael cocked his head. "Should we ask the forest's defenders for help? These bears maybe?"

"Now you understand," Katsu said. "Lady Kirinji, you can't force a kami to behave outside of his role. But as your extra-planar friend realized, the forest _does_ have some defenders who may join your cause. But you would have to convince them."

"How?" Mizuki asked before she could stop herself.

"I can take you to them," Katsu said. "Speak to them. You'll have to appeal to their single-minded role of defending the forest, however. Remember that kami do not easily change careers, like mortals. Mortals like us choose and train for roles in society; kami are literally made for them. A sword cannot suddenly be used as a paintbrush."

Ayano bowed her head. "I understand completely."

Katsu beamed. "There is a large trade town near the north-eastern edge of the forest. It is called Yamai-no-Zenju. Some of the forest's defenders frequent the area, as do many mortal mercenaries and sell-swords of various repute. I give you my blessing on your quest."

Ayano gasped. "Thank you... thank you so much!"

She stood, as did Mizuki and Azrael. "Let's get ready," she told her fellows. "It may take hours to get there, so -"

"No, no." Katsu stood up and prepared green-blue mana. "There's a river near here, and its patron kami have taught the brothers of this temple many new spells. Such as this." He intensified his green-blue mana and clapped his hands together, hard.

Mizuki couldn't even cry out as she felt herself warped through a tunnel of mana. Colors and noise rushed past -

"Whoa!" Mizuki stumbled as she re-appeared, and nearby, Azrael materialized, and then Ayano joined them. She nearly fell over and waved her arms for balance.

"Hang on." Mizuki took Ayano's hand and stabilized her.

"Thank you." Ayano glanced around at the town street where they stood. "Odd... where is everyone?"

Indeed, the street was empty except for the three of them. And there was a huge shadow over the street... where was it coming from? What was blocking the sun?

Mizuki whirled around and felt her heart sink. "Uh... guys?"

A massive, obsidian-skinned demon towered over the wooden buildings, its four eyes glowing red on its muzzle-like face. Patches of its skin were missing, revealing silver machinery inside, as well as thick tubes of oil. Hundreds of cyborg creatures hung onto its body like cicadas on a grotesque tree trunk.

Ayano and Azrael turned, too. "Oh. This could be a problem," Azrael said, oddly calm.

"Indeed," Ayano said faintly, going pale. "That's Akuta-Ne, the Iron Skin. And the Phyrexians got their hands on him. We only have one option now."

"What is that?" Azrael asked.

Ayano swallowed. "Run."


	13. Chapter 13

**FALL SEVEN TIMES**

 **by Ulquiorra9000**

 **Chapter 13**

Mizuki took the lead; she lowered her head and sprinted down Yamai-no-Zenju's abandoned streets with Azrael and Ayano behind her, rushing past shops, _ryokan_ inns, and empty theaters alike. She kicked up loose dust and pebbles on the dirt road, praying that she didn't trip. She was still in Akuta-Ne's shadow, and wouldn't rest until that _thing_ was out of her sight!

But she could still hear it.

Lumbering footsteps shuddered the whole town as the cyborg demon stepped closer, and its shadow extended as it kept pace with Mizuki's party. At the same time, Mizuki heard the thudding sound of Phyrexians jumping off Akuta-Ne's skin and onto rooftops. Odd cries and chatter in a horrible language echoed across the town.

"What do they want with this place?" Azrael huffed.

"Yamai-no-Zenju is a gateway to the Jukai Forest," Ayano told him breathlessly as the party took a left toward the nearest city gate. "From here, the Phyrexians can easily spread throughout the region. The kami blessed this town; travelers here can easily get to other towns and shrines around here."

It wasn't enough that the Phyrexians spread their taint through Kamigawa's water supply, was it?

"No!" Mizuki skidded to a halt as a squad of Phyrexians cut her off. Two golems led the party, the eyeless beasts brandishing their hypodermic needle weapons and leering. Two dozen oily, cyborg humans and kitsune drew their own crooked swords and maces, preparing to attack.

"Looks like we're not leaving Yamai-no-Zenju without a fight," Azrael commented darkly. He fired up his brass bracers' enchantments, and flames coated the weapons. "I suppose this is another chance to test these bracers."

Ayano drew her katana, a high-quality one, and stared at Azrael's bracers. "Where did you get those, again? Such an odd design..."

"A plane called Fiora," Azrael explained quickly as the Phyrexian squad approached. "From the armory of a wealthy friend, now deceased. Now, let's -"

Before either group could strike a blow, sudden shouts drew the Phyrexians' attention. _Human_ voices!

Samurai in mossy, wooden armor vaulted over a _ryokan_ 's rooftop and leaped onto the unsuspecting Phyrexians. The newcomers' blades danced through the air, and half of the cyborg humans and kitsune fell at once, split cleanly apart. The rest yowled and swung their own weapons.

Then, a burly budoka monk emerged, hands clapped together with strong green mana. He opened his palms, then slammed them onto the dirt road. At once, thick, leafy vines emerged from the road and coalesced around the monk.

Then Mizuki saw the sacred orbs of mana floating around the monk and his vines. Did he just summon a kami?!

Azrael let loose a furious roar and sprang. His blue-black mana combined with the bracers' red mana to form three-color punches that blasted away the Phyrexians with impunity. A cyborg kitsune rasped dryly and swung its katana, until Azrael easily caught the sharp blade in one mana-infused hand. Then he tugged, and wrenched the sword (and the arm holding it) free. The one-armed cyborg kitsune stumbled back, until Azrael vaporized it with a heavy blow from his other fist.

"Hell yeah!" Mizuki cheered. She drew her own Fiora weapon, the enchanted short sword, and activated its power with a mental command. Just in time; one of the two golems snarled and bore down on her, raising its needle assembly to impale her. Its toothy, chrome-plated face sneered at her.

Mizuki narrowly evaded the quick blow, and dirt was kicked up as the heavy needle stabbed the ground. For a few precious seconds, the golem was stuck in place as it tried to wrench its needle free. Mizuki took this chance to bring her sword's red-white blade down on the golem's flank.

Tough, oily muscle and chrome plating boiled away under the sword's pressure, and the golem roared in pain. Then, it finally tore its needle arm free and swung it like a blunt instrument.

Mizuki nimbly jumped high to avoid the needle, and she landed a glancing blow on the golem's head. Her enchanted sword dug a deep, charred scar into its chrome plating.

With another aggravated snarl, the golem whirled around and seized Mizuki's leg with its other arm. It threw her onto the hard dirt road, and Mizuki grunted in pain, trying to roll with the impact. But she already saw the wounded golem towering over her, preparing to impale her.

Ayano swiftly placed herself between the two combatants, her left hand holding the golem's needle in place. Her silky hair billowed from the waves of green-white mana radiating from her body, and her left arm's skin was tough like rock. The golem couldn't force its way through her defenses at all.

Ayano impaled the golem with her enchanted katana right in its center of mass, and the Phyrexian beast howled. Then, it swung a fist and knocked Ayano aside. The noble girl tumbled and sprang into a crouched position, but she was too far to stop the golem from lunging at Mizuki again.

This time, Mizuki took matters into her own hands. "Thanks for the help, Ayano!" she said, then stabbed her enchanted short sword into the stab wound that Ayano had created. She bared her teeth as she willed her sword to pump even more red-white power into the blade, and the golem glowed white-hot from the inside. Then it exploded.

"Whoa!" Mizuki threw her arms up to shield her face from the blast. She hastily jumped back, not wanting to get seared.

Ayano stepped over. "Well done," she said. "Those golems.. they are tougher than I thought."

"Y-yeah," Mizuki said shakily. She stared at the charred crater where the golem had stood. "I saw some when the Phyrexians sent a squad to Juka-no-Nadachi. They're the Phyrexian team leaders, I think. We oughta tell those samurai to take 'em out first in other squads. Maybe the other Phyrexians will scatter?"

Ayano smiled. "Very good. I'll tell them."

With Azrael's help, the green-mana samurai dispatched the rest of the Phyrexian squad, including the other golem. Two samurai had taken serious blows to the stomach, but they were already mending those wounds with green mana. And the budoka monk now stood in a two-legged tangle of vines and roots that formed a rough human shape, complete with the sacred orbs.

The monk and samurai bowed their heads to Ayano. "You are a noblewoman, yes?" a samurai asked.

"Yes. I am Ayano Hatsumoto Kirinji," Ayano explained. "My companions are Mizuki and Azrael. Please tell us: what can we do to help?"

The samurai team's captain, their tai-cho, glared up at the massive Akuta-Ne. "Our kitsune scout squads confirmed that Akuta-Ne, the Iron Skin was coming this way. No doubt to capture this town and use it to spread his Takenuma friends throughout the region. We _can't_ let the town fall."

"They're Phyrexians," Mizuki blurted out.

The tai-cho narrowed his eyes. "They're what?"

Mizuki lowered her sword but didn't power down its red-white enchantment. "I've heard of Akuta-Ne. He's from the Takenuma Swamp, I know, but invaders called the Phyrexians must have captured him and sent him on this mission. These things we fought, they were Phyrexians, too. They're all over Kamigawa."

The samurai and the monk muttered among themselves. "Look, girl," the tai-cho said, "we appreciate the help. But I've never heard of Phyrexians."

"Believe her," Azrael said darkly, his eyes glinting like steel. "I've fought them before. You have _never_ faced a greater threat."

"They convert our people into their own," Ayano added hastily. "If we don't destroy the sources of the Phyrexian invasion, it will never end! And we'll continue to face our own beloved people, family and friends, on the battlefield."

The tai-cho huffed. "Look, all I know is that tai-sa Kokuda ordered this town abandoned so his squads could ambush the invaders and surround Akuta-Ne, with no civilian losses. Hear them?"

Mizuki _did_ hear them: more samurai squads throughout Yamai-no-Zenju fighting other platoons of Phyrexians. Maybe the samurai could handle cyborg natives, but the golems were tough... and what about Akuta-Ne himself? Mizuki voiced these concerns.

The tai-cho shrugged. "I'm responsible for my squad, kid -"

"It's Mizuki!"

"Fine. Mizuki. But tai-sa Kokuda knows what he's doing. We'll deal with these Takenuma Phyrexian freaks and -"

He froze when he held out a small medallion in his hand. It was enchanted, and a green light turned to orange.

"What does that mean?" Azreal asked tightly.

"Tai-sa Kokuda's in trouble," the tai-cho said, going pale. "I can't believe it... we planned this perfectly! No one has ever foiled him before!"

But as he spoke, the massive Akuta-Ne, the Iron Skin roared and started smashing buildings and stomping all around him. On samurai, maybe? And all the while, more cyborg humans and kitsune kept emerging from the holes in its skin.

"Lady Ayano, you and your vassals may come with us if you wish," the tai-cho said. "But my squad is moving out to reinforce tai-sa Kokuda's squad no matter what!"

With that, the tai-cho and his men leaped nimbly onto a rooftop and hopped their way toward the town's center. The budoka monk gave Mizuki and the others a polite bow, then commanded his kami mount to follow the tai-cho's squad.

Mizuki made a face. "We're not _vassals_..."

"We ought to help them," Azrael said. "Think how useful a bunch of grateful samurai would be for our coalition! And you both saw their healing prowess..."

"The bushi samurai of the Jukai Forest are some of Kamigawa's finest warriors," Ayano said, "but I don't think they can take down Akuta-Ne, the Iron Skin alone. I agree: we do a favor for _their_ favor. Shall we go?"

It was a pretty good point, so despite having to deal with that horrible cyborg demon, Mizuki joined her fellows as they raced through the city streets, heading in the same direction the samurai had gone. A few odd cyborg samurai or kitsune got in the way, but Azrael's fire bracers charred them into harmless ash.

Then Mizuki found herself in the town square, where nearty forty wood-armored, green mana-enhanced samurai stood in a wide formation. Three budoka monks in vine-like kami stood with them, and in the formation's center was an older samurai seated on an oversized wolf. His helmet's horns were long and curved like a crescent moon, and he held a bamboo pole with a green flag on the end. The character for "nature" was painted in gold on the banner.

Was that the colonel? Tai-sa Kokuda?

What looked like three hundred cyborg Phyrexians surrounded the samurai, along with at least twelve golems, plus oily, blade-covered machine beasts with glowing blue eyes.

And worst of all, Akuta-Ne towered over the battlefield, only a few tall buildings separating it from the battlefield at waist height.

Akuta-Ne let out a roar.

The Phyrexians charged.

"Here comes the hard part," Mizuki commented darkly, holding up her enchanted short sword to the ready position.

"I can make it a little easier." Ayano drew a scroll from her robes, unrolled it, and pressed her finger on the paper's markings. The inkbrush characters glowed blue-white.

Azrael stared. "Ayano, is that -"

Ayano nodded. "Higure's scroll. Let's hope he'll come up with a good plan. He usually does."

"Usually?" Mizuki squeaked as Akuta-Ne took another earth-shuddering step closer.

Ayano was pale, but her face was set in a determined mask. "We'll find out when he gets here."


	14. Chapter 14

**FALL SEVEN TIMES**

 **by Ulquiorra9000**

 **Chapter 14**

Mizuki didn't know exactly how Ayano's summoner scroll worked, but she hoped that it would hurry the hell up! There wasn't much time; the Phyrexian horde let out horrible shouts and roars as the cyborgs charged at the samurai's defensive formations.

And Mizuki's squad wasn't unnoticed. Already, six Phyrexian kitsune leaped down from a rooftop, their oil-stained samurai swords held in hand.

Azrael braced himself and swept his left arm through the air. He let out a shout as he focused his bracer's ruby's mana. At his command, the bracer let out a seething arc of flame, enchanced by his blue-black mana. The flames caught the cyborg kitsune in mid-jump and vaporized them all.

"Impressive, Azrael," Ayano said brightly. She held her enchanted summoning scroll close to her chest.

Azrael panted. "Took... a lot of energy," he admitted. He turned. "Watch out!"

Although most of the Phyrexians clashed with the samurai and budoka monks in the town square, more and more of them diverted their attention to Mizuki's squad. Oily, metallic samurai, kitsune, and mishappen artifact beasts charged at them.

Ayano stepped in front of Mizuki and Morrel, tossing aside her scroll and throwing her arms out wide in a T. She flooded her skin with green-white mana just in time: the metal beasts had launched a vicious volley of oily knives from their chests, and the projectiles bounced off of Ayano's rock-like skin.

 _Nice one._ Mizuki noted that the artifact beasts were busy reloading more projectiles, so she leaped around Ayano's cover as three cyborg samurai approached. She ducked under the Phyrexians' katanas and sliced one in half at the waist in a blast of red-white flame. The samurai's two smoking halves crumpled.

Meanwhile, Azrael pounced and brought down his right fist on another Phyrexian samurai, and he incinerated it with one punch. The third samurai, meanwhile, swung its blade, and Azrael caught the blow on his right wrist. His arm trembled with the effort of keeping the weapon at bay.

Until Ayano swung her own katana and beheaded the marauding samurai.

"More!" Azrael warned, pointing.

Mizuki could hardly believe it; the forest samurai already had their hands full with hundreds of Phyrexians, but even more were still crawling out of the holes in Akuta-Ne's skin! Did that demon have a whole army inside him?!

Mizuki swung her short sword to block yet another cyborg samurai's crooked katana, but three more thrust their blades at her. She rolled away to evade the blows, only to find a golem waiting for her.

 _No!_

The golem kicked Mizuki aside, and she grunted from the pain. It felt like half her ribs had been cracked! She stubbornly clung to her enchanted short sword, keeping it at the ready as the golem and the four samurai towered over her.

Ayano's rocky fist knocked aside one Phyrexian samurai, and the distraction was enough for Mizuki to get to her feet and slice off another samurai's metal-and-oil arm. The other two samurai backed away, their blue glowing eyes showing no emotion at all.

Then the golem showed a new trick: it focused sickly blue mana on its hand and thrust out its open palm. Mizuki shrieked as a freezing wave of vile mana blasted her away, and her ears rang as she wsas slammed against a shop's brick wall. Nearby, Ayano was knocked off-balance, and more Phyrexian kitsune warriors arrived. They stabbed Ayano all over, their blades finally cutting through her defenses. Sharp, oily steel drew blood all over, staining Ayano's expensive robes.

"GET AWAY!" Azrael hurried over and kicked aside one kitsune, then blew apart a human samurai with another blue-black-red punch. But he was clearly tiring, and a samurai's blade tore into his chest, scoring a shallow cut. Then the golem drew back a fist and knocked Azrael flat onto his back.

Ayano staggered back, bleeding all over, her green-white enchantments fading. Her silky hair was hanging in sweaty clumps over her face, her katana held in trembling hands. "No... not yet!" she cried. As she spoke, the cyborgs and artifact beasts closed in around her -

A flash of stunning light erupted from the summoner scroll. In a flourish of blue robes, Higure, the Still Wind emerged, and through the eye slit of his cowl, his dark eyes glinted like furious steel.

The golem grunted in surprise and pointed at Higure. It said something in the hideous Phyrexian language. Maybe something like "kill him!"

Higure crouched, a hand poised over his utility belt, his eyes calculating.

In a flash, he drew and threw down a smoke bomb.

Mizuki blinked and coughed in the sudden smoke, but she could easily hear Higure leaping around, and she heard the thuds and _whack_ sounds as he struck blow after blow with stunning speed. The golem shouted another command, but it apparently went unheeded as Higure pummeled every Phyrexian he could reach.

Mizuki heard the wet _squelch_ of a blade in flesh. Then the pained roar of the golem.

Then nothing.

The smoke finally cleared and Higure stood alone, surrounded by broken and mangled Phyrexians. A kunai knife, enchanted with red-black mana, was still lodged deep in the dead golem's throat.

Ayano stumbled forward. "Higure!"

The ninja gently took hold of Ayano's shoulders. "Lady Ayano," he said in his deep voice. "I'll get you out of harm's way. I'm not done here yet."

Mizuki collected herself and watched as Higure deposited Ayano somewhere outside the town and out of sight, where the last of her green-white mana could slowly mend her wounds in peace.

"You, too," Higure told Mizuki and Azrael curtly. "I can handle this. You look like you've done enough already."

"N-no." Mizuki coughed and shook her head. "We gotta do more."

"We've already sworn ourselves to Kamigawa's defense at all costs," Azrael added. "It's our code."

The Planeswalker Code.

"I see." Higure scanned the whole town with his eyes. "The samurai won't hold for much longer. See? Even now, Akuta-Ne moves to end this."

He was right: the huge Phyrexian demon had apparently lost patience in the face of the samurais' stubborn defenses. The great demon stepped into the open courtyard (even stepping on a few Phyrexians along the way) and started punching the ground. Blasts of dirt were kicked up with each blow, and Akuta-Ne even knocked aside buildings to bury the samurai in the rubble. None of the counterattacks from samurai blades or monk-controlled kami could break through its legendarily durable skin.

"Tell me you have a solution..." Azrael told Higure.

The ninja nodded. "You two can act as my escorts. My plan won't go unnoticed. Hurry!"

At once, Higure easily vaulted atop a _ryokan_ inn's sloped roof and ran to the east. Mizuki took a deep breath to steady herself and followed with Azrael, racing across the town's rooftops. "You know where you're goin'?" Mizuki asked.

"I do," Higure said over his shoulder. "I've visited Yamai-no-Zenju several times, and my men track its visitors and supplies well. We have the tools for success. Follow me closely."

Mizuki tried not to watch the battle in the courtyard, but she still saw a samurai get squished under Akuta-Ne's hand, and another samurai fell to the endless Phyrexians.

What good was bushido or prayer when the Phyrexians never stopped coming?

Higure was clearly approaching a large warehouse. "Here," he called out. "Watch my back. I'll get into -"

Something sprang up and intercepted Higure, a small, hooded being with a steel face. In place of legs, it had a dozen flexible metal tendrils, each ending in an oversized syringe.

"What the -" Mizuki blurted.

The creature shot out three tendrils. Each one pierced Mizuki, Azrael, and Higure at once, and the tendrils all retracted.

Mizuki expected a dose of numbing venom or sudden pain, but nothing. What just happened? She held her short sword tightly, the red-white enchantment still humming on the blade's surface. Just what was that thing doing -

The creature drew all its tendrils up into its body, then morphed into a perfect likeness of Azrael. The clone stood tall, its red hair billowing in the wind.

Azrael stared. "Oh no -"

The Phyrexian clone raced across the rooftop in a blur of blue and black mana. It knocked Mizuki aside and swung a fist right at the original Azrael, and Azrael blocked with his left arm's bracer and fired up its ruby. A jet of flame blasted the Phyrexian back, charring it.

Higure charged and delivered a terrific roundhouse kick to the Azrael clone, then pummeled its chest with a rapid series of punches, each harder than the last. The clone sprawled onto its back on the roof's tiles.

Then it morphed into Higure.

The Higure clone moved even faster, and a savage low kick broke the original Higure's right shin. The ninja buckled, his breath catching behind his cowl. He shook.

"No!" Mizuki stabbed her short sword in the Phyrexian's direction, and she issued a jet of fiery red mana, sharpened and focused into a helix by the white mana. The burning helix hit the Phyrexian clone square in the chest and nearly knocked it off the roof.

Then the Phyrexian morphed into Mizuki, complete with a copy of her sword!

"This Phyrexian..." Azrael said darkly. "It can become anything it samples! A sort of... metamorph. I've studied the theory at my university..."

"Yeah, well, watch out!" Mizuki cried. Across the roof, her clone pointed its sword and repeated the helix-mana attack, directed right at Azrael.

Azrael rolled to evade the blow, but when the attack slammed into the roof where he had stood, the sheer power still charred him and threw him aside. He got to his hands and knees, but the Mizuki clone was already upon him.

Mizuki hurried over and crossed blades with her twin. She saw her own face staring blankly back, only cold murder in its eyes. Red-white enchantments sizzled and spat sparks as they clashed, and Mizuki managed to wrench aside her clone's blade long enough to score a deep cut on its right thigh.

Then the clone morphed back into Azrael's form and kicked Mizuki away. Mizuki stumbled, then fell onto her rump, watching as the Azrael clone advanced, still holding a copy of Mizuki's sword. It twirled the blade, then released another red-white helix.

Higure intercepted the blow. Blue mana glowed on his right arm as he caught the attack head-on, and with a mighty effort, he diverted it. The helix attack shot through empty air until it dissolved into harmless sparks.

Despite his broken shin, Higure moved like a tempest. He leaped into the air with his good leg and delivered a kick that tore the sword from the Phyrexian's hand. Then, while supporting himself on one hand, he pummeled the clone with his other arm and leg, brusing it all over and rupturing its skin. Dark Phyrexian oil bled from the wounds.

 _I've gotta help!_ Mizuki staggered to her feet and pointed her sword. She diverted the last of her weapon's mana into a helix that burned off the clone's left arm.

The Phyrexian clone staggered. Its head morphed like liquid metal between Azrael's, Mizuki's, and Higure's, its clothing constantly morphing and blending. It tried to beat Higure back, but its body spasmed and buckled under the strain.

Higure finally landed a punch that knocked the clone's head right off. The metamorph collapsed in a pool of liquid metal, then vaporized in a puff of noxious blue mana.

Mizuki helped Azrael to his feet, then checked with Higure. "Your leg..."

"One moment." Higure unrolled enchanted bandages and wrapped them around his shin. The green-white mana acted as a splint and probably as a painkiller as well. Higure tested the leg; he seemed satisfied.

Without another word, the ninja ran across the roof and onto the warehouse's roof. He punched open a hole and jumped in.

Azrael stood on the edge of the other building's roof. "What is he doing?"

"Dunno. What kind of weapons could be in there?" Mizuki asked. She had never been here before...

Then Higure arrived, carrying under his arm not a fancy weapon or scroll of powerful spells, but a large box of fireworks.

"Get me to Akuta-Ne in one piece," the ninja said briskly. "We have a town to save."


	15. Chapter 15

**FALL SEVEN TIMES**

 **by Ulquiorra9000**

 **Chapter 15**

 _Fireworks? Okay, Higure's lost his mind... wait!_

Mizuki read the characters printed on the box's surface and she grinned. The fireworks were enchanted with red and white mana! Normally, that would allow them to make a bigger boom for fireworks shows. But she got the feeling that Higure had a different show in mind!

With renewed vigor, Mizuki leaped and sprinted across the rooftops with Higure and Azrael, and she prayed for the forest samurai to hold out just a little longer. To be fair, Tai-sa Kokuda's men had slain many Phyrexian soldiers and were still taking them down, but every minute, another samurai fell, and they couldn't afford the losses like the Phyrexians could. The budoka monks in their kami suits helped bolster Kokuda's defenses, but they were clearly tiring.

This had gone on long enough.

"Watch out!" Azrael suddenly shouted.

Akuta-Ne had taken notice of Higure's squad. The towering demon roared and threw down an open plam, intending to crush the three humans. Mizuki and the others leaped onto a new rooftop, and Mizuki watched as Akuta-Ne's hand demolished the small scroll shop she had been standing on.

At the same time, Phyrexian kitsune were leaping onto the rooftops, holding short swords or sais in their oily, chrome-armored hands. They screeched and wailed, their glowing blue eyes fixed on the three humans.

"Allow me." Azrael whirled in place and fired up his blue-black mana, allowing it to flow onto his bracers' flames. Thick ribbons of red-blue-black mana snaked through the air and blasted away the cyborg kitsune, charring their bodies into useless junk.

Azrael's knees buckled and he held a hand to his heart, his face pale. "I can't keep this up," he panted as more cyborg kitsune and humans emerged to defend their master. "My mana..."

Higure grunted the affirmative, and then leaped into action despite his injured shin bone. He delivered a swift kick that took off a Phyrexian samurai's head, then drew an enchanted kunai knife and slashed apart a kitsune. Then, just before two samurai could attack Higure from behind, Mizuki pointed her short sword and channeled its red-white mana onto the blade. She felt her clothes and hair ripple from the mana pressure.

The familiar helix of red-white mana caught one cyborg samurai on his left flank, and the spell plowed on like a beast and blew away the other samurai as well. Just as the helix vanished, though, Mizuki saw her sword's enchantment flicker and dim.

"This thing's runnin' out of mana!" Mizuki cried as yet more Phyrexians moved in for the kill.

Azrael wiped his brow. "It will recharge after a few hours. We've got incoming!"

But Azrael wobbled in place, his natural man and the bracers' flame spell both exhausted. He edged closer to Higure. "I may not be able to stop them," he warned the ninja.

"How about me?" came another voice.

The tai-cho, or samurai captain from earlier, had emerged with five of his men, green-mana katanas held at the ready.

"You!" Mizuki blurted.

"I can see what you're trying to do," the tai-cho said. "Let me cover for you. Higure, the Still Wind wouldn't get this close to Akuta-Ne without good reason."

Meanwhile, the cyborg demon in question stared down at the assembled humans and drew back a fist to obliterate them.

"I am tai-cho Yashido of the forest!" the tai-cho roared in defiance. "I am proud to serve under tai-sa Kokuda for the safety of the Jukai, this town, and all its denizens!" He gave a war cry, and the other samurai did the same as the Phyrexians closed in.

Higure nodded. "Let's go, Mizuki, Azrael."

Mizuki followed Higure and Azrael onto another rooftop just as Akuta-Ne threw its massive punch. Its fist smashed the building that tai-cho Yashido and his men stood on, and the samurai found themselves standing in the rubble on the ground, surrounded by many more Phyrexians. The samurai started swinging with their enchanted katanas, clashing with Phyrexian claws and teeth.

They wouldn't last long.

Mizuki escorted Higure right into Akuta-Ne's shadow, near its left knee. But the demon easily spotted them with its four glowing eyes, and it raised its clawed left foot. Its stomp attack crushed the building that Mizuki's squad occupied, and Mizuki felt a thrill in her stomach as she fell amid the cascading rubble. _No!_

Splintered wood scratched Mizuki all over, and she fired up the last of her green-black mana to protect herself from the worst of it. Her ears were filled with the roar of the collapsing building, rubble falling everywhere she could see. A large rafter pinned her down in place, and it didn't crush her only because other rubble propped it up a little bit. Still, Mizuki couldn't squirm free from the rafter's immense weight.

Akuta-Ne snarled and snapped high overhead and Mizuki felt a chill. Was that thing going to crush all of Yamai-no-Zenju?! Miost likely, the town's _location_ , rather than the actual buildings, was what allowed this place to serve as a spiritual hub around the Jukai Forest. Knocking down buildings that humans had worked hard to build, that was just collatoral.

Mizuki scraped together the last of her Fiora sword's enchantment.

Smoke curled from the rafter as Mizuki squirmed into position to press her blade against the wood. She coughed and her eyes stung, but she kept it up, gradually cutting through the rafter with whatever mana she had left. She felt a thrill of panic as the enchantment dimmed nearly to nothing, its arcane hum nearly silent and sputtering. _Not yet!_

All the while, Mizuki heard the metallic, awkward footsteps of Phyrexian warriors making their way toward her, and she held her breath, willing her short sword to hurry the hell up!

The rafter split into with a shower of sparks and smoke.

Mizuki immediately wrenched herself free and got to her feet. She held up her sword to a defensive position, its enchantment 100% drained. Only the mundane steel blade separated her from the oily, cyborg humans, kitsune, and a few ogres that shuffled toward her.

A strong hand clamped on her shoulder and spun her around.

"Forget them!" Higure hissed, his eyes stern through his cowl's eye slit. "We are close now! Help me carry the box."

Azrael joined them, and they all helped the tiring Higure carry the box of fireworks to Akuta-Ne's clawed feet. The demon took a step back and threw down another open-palm attack to crush them.

This time, Higure not only avoided the blunt attack, but he stepped onto the back of Akuta-Ne's hand. Mizuki and Azrael joined him, and the three of them fearlessly ran up Akuta-Ne's thick arm, the box heavy between the three of them.

Mizuki grimaced at the noxious vapors that composed Akuta-Ne's breath, but she didn't dare stop. She stood with Higure and Azarel on its shoulder, but even now, she saw Akuta-Ne's other arm come around to swat them off.

"No!" Azrael threw a punch, and his blue-black-red mana jet knocked away Akuta-Ne's hand for a few precious seconds. Then Azrael sank to his knees, and he nearly fell off until Mizuki took his hand to steady him.

"I can take it from here." Higure grunted in effort and held the fireworks under his arm, pried open the lid, and used a match from his utility belt. The fireworks started sizzling.

The ninja leaped and hung onto Akuta-Ne's lower jaw with his free hand, and with a colossal effort, heaved the box of live fireworks down the demon's oily throat.

Akuta-Ne impuslively swallowed the box as Higure leaped down and rolled to a halt on a rooftop. Following his head, Mizuki took Azrael's hand and helped him join Higure, the two of them landing heavily by Higure's side.

Then the box went off.

Akuta-Ne howled and stumbled back as its chest expanded and glowed red from the rapid explosions inside. Flame and colorful sparks issued from its mouth, and the demon coughed and scrabbled at its throat.

"Did we kill it?" Mizuki blurted.

Akuta-Ne yowled in agony, its chest charring from the continuing firework explosions. Then, with its body smoking, it bowed its head and scampered off. Which was saying a lot, given its size. The great obsidian-skinned beast paid no attention to what it stepped on as it sprinted away, still coughing and hacking.

"Where... is it going?" Azrael asked tightly.

"I cannot say." Higure shook his head. "I had hoped to kill it. I suppose that driving it away from Yamai-no-Zenju is victory enough for today."

The samurai probably shared that sentiment. Without Akuta-Ne to support them, the Phyrexians' fighting prowess dipped. Even they were vulnerable to morale losses, it seemed, and tai-cho Kokuda's men and the budoka monks finally finished the last of them.

Tentatively, Mizuki, Higure, and Azrael joined the tai-cho in the town square, surrounded by injured samurai. The whole town square glowed with pulsing green light as the samurai and monks healed themselves with green mana. The few present kami lent their own mana, sealing the worst injuries smoothly.

"I'll be damned," the gray-haired tai-cho said as he removed his helmet, showing his top-knot. Gratitude flickered in his steely eyes. "Never thought I'd see Akuta-Ne, the Iron Skin scamper off like a beaten cur."

"Every problem has a solution," Higure said staunchly. "A twist of thought is what's needed to find it."

"Ninjas..." one samurai muttered.

Tai-cho Kokuda held up a gloved hand for silence. "This has been a well-earned victory, and a grim reminder of what's at stake. Yamai-no-Zenju may find itself under siege again soon, or failing that, another place. These 'Phyrexians', as some call them, are more tancious than an ogre in a blood feud."

"Wh-what about Yashido?" Mizuki asked breathlessly.

"We're scouting the area now for a damage report," tai-sa Kokuda said. "Stay here, and we'll lend you our healing magic."

Mizuki, Azrael, and Higure were still exhausted half an hour later, but at least all their injuries were mended, most of all Higure's shin bone. Lady Ayano joined them and threw her arms around Higure in a tight hug.

"I saw Akuta-Ne suffering from the fireworks, and I _knew_ that only you would devise such a clever solution," the noble girl said fondly.

Higure patted Ayano's back. "Of course."

Tai-sa Kokuda's scouts came back and confirmed the death of tai-cho Yashido and his men. Overall, only twenty-four samurai, and the three budoka monks and their kami partners, were still alive. Forty-five samurai had launched the counter-attack to save Yamai-no-Zenju. Only these were left.

But they were veterans of the Phyrexians, too.

Tai-sa Kokuda thumped a fist to his heart. He put his horned helmet back on. "Lady Ayano, you may tell daimyo Hiroshi Kirinji that the forest's defenders are sworn to his cause. The Phyrexians dared to attempt conquering the Jukai Forest! They will regret that."

Ayano beamed. "Thank you, tai-sa."

Higure glanced at Ayano. "Perhaps I should stay and -"

Ayano shook her head. "I'm fine, Higure. You deserve some rest. Go back to the clan's castle and help my father and Osamu better prepare their defenses against Akuta-Ne and other Phyrexian leaders. I'm sure that tai-sa Kokuda here will appreciate my father's help."

Higure nodded, then held two fingers up to his face to concentrate his blue mana. In a puff of blue mana, he was gone.

"He can teleport?" Mizuki asked.

"Only among fixed points," Ayano explained. "The Kirinji clan's castle, plus wherever I activate my scroll. But my scroll will need time to recharge."

"Higure did a lot for us. Now we should find our own way to counter the Phyrexians," Azrael said doggedly. "Ayano, your father's coalition is growing large, and must have many scouts. Perhaps they've found -"

"We're all exhausted," tai-sa Kokuda said. "Give it until tomorrow, red-haired stranger -"

"Azrael," the man explained.

"Azrael," Kokuda said. "Exhausting ourselves through haste will not save Kamigawa. Lady Ayano knows best. My men will sweep the forest's fronteir for any Phyrexian stragglers, then rendezvous with the Kirinji clan's coalition at large. There's a town further down the road, probably beneath the Phyrexians' notice. Take the time to rest."

"Yeah, Azrael," Mizuki said with a grin, still giddy from the tentative victory. "Time to visit another ryokan inn! I know how much you love them..."

Ayano giggled as Azrael sighed.

"Then let's get going," Azrael said with a shrug.

Mizuki felt ominous thoughts threaten to re-emerge in her mind, and she pushed them away for now. They had won. She'd save the dread of the Phyrexians for tomorrow.


	16. Chapter 16

**FALL SEVEN TIMES**

 **by Ulquiorra9000**

 **Chapter 16**

"Grand Cenobite! We have finally captured the spy!"

In Elesh Norn's throne room deep in her spire-like fortress, a high priest gestured with one hand while two porcelain-armored golems dragged forth a human woman in black leather armor. The priest's doll-like, cracked mask showed no emotion, of course, but Elesh Norn still heard the priest's smug satisfaction.

Elesh Norn rose from her tall throne and took a few delicate steps forward, her deep red skirts trailing on the pitted metal floor. Her armored feet clanked, her tongue running along her teeth. "Well done. You two -" She pointed at the golems with a spindly finger. "Release the spy. I will speak to it."

The golems obeyed and stepped back, joining the throne room's guard force under the white banners. Meanwhile, Elesh Norn knelt before the spy, who was kneeling on the floor, her wrists bound together behind her back. The spy was breathing hard but showed no other signs of distress or concern.

Elesh Norn traced her claw-like finger along the spy's jawline. The agent was a moderately _compleat_ human, her head unaltered except for veins of black mana under her skin. Her light armor was typical of a scout's, emphasizing flexibility and light weight over dedicated protection. The arcane symbol etched on the spy's right pauldron left no doubt of the spy's origins.

"Sheoldred never quits, does she?" Elesh Norn commented.

The scout was silent, her dark eyes looking anywhere but Elesh Norn's eyeless face.

The Grand Cenobite ran her fingers through the scout's ponytail. "You're not just scouting my troop positions, are you?"

Still no response.

Elesh Norn waited a moment, then abruptly stood, seized the scout's neck in her left hand, and lifted the human to eye level. "Where did you find her?" she demanded to the golems.

The golems hastily answered in the guttural Phyrexian language.

"I see." Elesh Norn curled her upper lip. "No doubt now. It seems that you were en route to collect data on the joint invasion of Kamigawa. You are blessed that _my_ forced caught you before Jin-Gitaxias' men did. They would experiment all day on you, and they _don't_ believe in using sensation-numbing chemicals first."

The scout wheezed for air, her eyes hard. "Wh-what you're doing..." she choked out.

Elesh Norn gently shook the scout. "I beg your pardon?"  
The scout swallowed in Elesh Norn's vice-like grip. "Th-there can only be one... one reason you chose K-Kamigawa as your target! Sheoldred isn't... isn't stupid, you know." The woman grimaced and forced in another breath. "Y-your mission is heresy! Sheoldred won't stand for it, and Vorinclex i-isn't sympathetic to y-your cause, either. S-something has to be done."

Elesh Norn threw the scout onto the floor. "I do not care what that blackmailing spider-woman thinks!" she roared. "Did she send you out of envy? What Jin-Gitaxias and I are doing is _visionary_! Vorinclex is too concerned with food chains and marking territory with animal dung to see it, either!"

"It's heresy!" the scout shouted back. At her words, the porcelain-armored golems chattered angrily in Phyrexian but stayed in place.

"Listen," Elesh Norn said in a low, dangerous voice. "For all her scheming, Sheoldred is too foolish to see the future like Jin-Gitaxias and I have. His technology, and my head priestess, are making Phyrexian history! Radiah Albazan's mission is well underway. The Seven Steel Thanes will _not_ stop us."

The scout laughed harshly. "Oh, I've seen Radiah around before. That stupid girl is gonna betray the essence of New Phyrexia! And even if you've caught _me_ , there'll be others. Mark my words. Heresy's gotta be punished. And so it will."

Elesh Norn ground her teeth. She was nearly ready to move the Machine Orthodoxy into the grand plan's next step, but if Sheoldred really was upping her game, things could get... complicated, and fast.

"I will rise to any challenge, as will the Progress Engine," Elesh Norn finally said. "Two factions together fear nothing. One day, when New Phyrexia controls every world of existence, it will be due to _our_ vision. Now... _you_ won't see anything again."

At a gesture, the high priest stepped forward. He unsheathed a steel knife and applied it precisely to the scout's eyeballs and tongue. The scout's pained shouted schoed in the throne room as the priest worked.

Finally, the scout was escorted back into the wild, blind and mute. Her scouting days were over, but she could always remember Elesh Norn's words.

*o*o*o*o*

"This isn't like the other towns we've visited, Ayano. What is this place?"

Five days after the battle for Yamai-no-Zenju, Ayano had led her party across the rolling hills and open praerie of the Araba Plains, and now, the trio were nearing a large shrine in the center of a bustling town.

"One of the communication hubs of Kamigawa," Ayano said brightly as she led Azrael and Mizuki through the town's open front gates. Samurai in silver and blue armor patrolled the streets, the character for "Peace" drawn on their pauldrons. "You've never seen one of these?"

Azrael shook his head.

"There's only a few of 'em, but they're useful for armies and stuff," Mizuki added. She squeezed her way past two burly men in brown robes and conical straw hats. "That shrine up the road is a hive for messenger kami. The shrines were shut down during the Kami War, though."

"And they've been reactivated and very popular ever since," Ayano said. "We're just in time; from here, I can get a detailed update of my father's coalition, and where we're needed the most. It's much faster than using courier hawks."

"And it costs money, too," Mizuki mentioned. "My parents could never afford this even if they got here."

"Well, it'll be most useful now," Ayano said loftily. "Let's hurry."

The town itself was pretty ordinary, except for the many little white-blue kami flying to and from the shrine. One of them grazed Mizuki's cheek, a spirit composed of scroll paper, hands with crystalline claws, ribbon-like appendages, and a few white orbs of sacred mana orbiting the whole creature. It made a funny squeaking noise and drifted on.

"These kami seem very comfortable with humans," Azrael said, brushing one out of his bright red hair. The kami, however, chittered and landed again, running its little crystal claws through Azrael's long hair, its paper body twitching and rustling. Random characters appeared and disappeared on the papers, like "curious" and "strange" and "soft".

Ayano giggled. "I think it likes you."

"Does it?" Azrael scowled and tried to shoo it away, but the kami kept toying with his hair and prodding his ears.

"You ain't native to Kamigawa, so it's curious," Mizuki said with a grin. "It just wants to check you out, Azrael. Be cool."

Azrael sighed and allowed the inquisitive kami to sit on his head, still experimenting with his otherworldly hair. "I'm an alumni of Ezig Natum's greatest university, a master artificer, and explorer of worlds," he commented. "And now I've got a spirit on my head."

Mizuki tried and failed to contain her laughter.

There were other sights, too. There were many shops and mobile vendors here, representing races not often seen on the Plains. In fact, Mizuki spotted a cart where four akki goblins sold jewelry and polished stones and geodes. The long-nosed, shelled akki tried to wave over Ayano to do business with her, but the noble lady merely walked past. The akki lowered their flappy ears in disappointment.

There were also orochi, the snake people, around. The four-armed, scale-skinned humanoids were mainly selling armor or their own services as mercenaries and forest sages. Kitsune clerics offered theraputic magic and fortune-telling as well.

"Quite a variety," Azrael noted.

"Yes. Towns like this are essential to our world," Ayano said. "But there's few of them. This is only the second I've seen. I meant to bring us here days ago, but... you know..."

Mizuki felt a chill. She knew _exactly_ what Ayano meant: the Phyrexians. It seemed like every creek, river, and lake ran dark with the oil, and countless chrome-plated golems, cyborg samurai, and perplexing artifact monsters patrolled the shores. And even though Yamai-no-Zenju had been saved, more towns had fallen to the invaders, and Ayano's party had given those towns a wide berth. Several hours per day had been added to the travel time to avoid Phyrexian scouting parties. But the Phyrexians had sent squadrons of metallic thopters to the skies, making stealth even more challenging.

 _We're running out of time._

The kami on Azrael's head perked up and flew off just as Ayano reached one of the line of customers leading up to the shrine's three main entrances. Each entrance had a white-painted torii gate, and sacred ribbons hung from the gates' central wood beams. Many people, wealthy and poor, stood in line while a few kitsune samurai maintained order with gentle but firm hands.

"Uh... how long is this gonna take?" Mizuki complained.

Ayano tossed her hair. "Not long. Allow me."

She got a guard's attention. "I am Lady Ayano Hatsumoto Kirinji. I need to use this shrine at once on my father's behalf. Here are a few papers as proof..." She drew a few small scrolls from her robes and handed them over.

The kitsune samurai nodded. "Very well. You and your vassals may follow me."

Mizuki had given up on correcting everyone who thought that she and Azrael were Ayano's servants. Instead, she and the others followed the kitsune past the central line and into the large shrine's main hall. In here, jade statues, antique gongs, and wall scrolls served as decor, and kami flitted among the patrons already inside. Some patrons, however, used the messenger kami in private rooms.

"In here." The kitsune guard bowed politely and slid aside a door to admit Ayano's party into a private room, furnished with a low table, seating cushions, and a tea set. Mizuki waited until the door was shut, then sat at the table with everyone else.

Ayano poured everyone tea and took a sip. "This is usually a slow and ceremonious process," she explained, "but today, I find myself anxious to finish."

Azrael sipped his tea and made a face.

"Don't like the flavor?" Mizuki teased him, also taking a sip. It tasted fine to her!

Azrael merely scooted his mug away.

From a hole in the ceiling descended a large paper-and-ribbons kami, which hovered over the table's center, sacred blue mana orbs drifting around it.

"To my father, daimyo Hiroshi Kirinji," Ayano said in a loud, clear voice. She rested her tense fists on her lap.

The kami bobbed twice as though nodding with its whole body.

"What is it going to do?" Azrael asked.

"My father has a scroll blessed by the kami," Ayano told him. "It's a rare piece, and very useful for quick messaging like this. Most major leaders have them."

Then, the kami unrolled a long scroll from its body, and characters appeared there as though written by an invisible ink brush.

"AYANO! I AM SO GLAD TO HEAR FROM YOU," the characters read. Mizuki read them aloud for Azrael's benefit.

Ayano smiled. "Hello, father. I'm in a messenger shrine. I believe that I have made significant progress in recruiting local forces to our coalition. Have you heard the news of Yamai-no-Zenju?"

"OF COURSE," the characters read. "TAI-SA KOKUDA IS A SIGNIFICANT ASSET. BUT HIS MEN WON'T HAVE ANY MORE TIME TO REST. NEITHER WILL ANY OF US."

Ayano's breath caught in her throat and she leaned forward. Her eyes reflected the kami's sacred blue orbs. "What do you mean? What happened?"

"OSAMU AND MY OTHER ADVISORS HAVE DETERMINED THAT WE HAVE THE STRENGTH TO MARCH ON MINAMO ACADEMY," came daimyo Kirinji's response. "THE COALITION MUST STRIKE AND RELIEVE THE ACADEMY'S DEFENSES AGAINST THE PHYREXIANS. OR ELSE THE SCHOOL WILL FALL."

Azrael tensed when Mizuki finished translating. His brown eyes flashed. "Are we to help them as well?"  
Ayano repeated the question. Daimyo Kirinji responded at once. "ONLY IF YOU SO CHOOSE, DEAR DAUGHTER. WE HAVE RALLIED MANY TO OUR CAUSE, BUT MANY OTHERS HAVE ALREADY FALLEN OR DISAPPEARED. YOU MAY TRY TO RESCUE THEM, OR RISK JOINING MY FORCES TO BREAK THE SIEGE. JUST PLEASE BE CAREFUL, WHATEVER YOU CHOOSE TO DO. HIGURE CAN'T SAVE YOU FROM EVERYTHING."

Ayano bowed her head, clearly deep in thought. Mizuki didn't dare interrupt or make a sound, so she quietly sipped her tea again. It didn't seem to taste as good anymore.

Finally, Ayano cleared her throat. "I will join the coalition at Minamo Academy. Perhaps the sight of me will rally the men? And I've grown strong, Father. Strong enough to save the Academy. We can't lose it!"

"I SEE," Hiroshi's answer said. "I WILL PRAY FOR YOU, AYANO."

"Mizuki and Azrael are with me, too," Ayano added. She glanced at them, and they nodded. "They will help me. They promise."

Hiroshi took a moment to answer. "MAKE HASTE, THEN, DAUGHTER. TAI-SA KOKUDA AND THE OTHER MERCENARY COMMANDERS EXPECT A HUGE FORCE OF PHYREXIANS. WE DON'T FULLY KNOW WHAT WE WILL FACE THERE. IT WILL BE THE STUFF OF LEGENDS."

Ayano swallowed. "I expected no less. I... I love you, Father."

"AND I, YOU. BE WELL, AYANO."

The scroll went blank again, and the kami retreated through the roof's entry hole.

Ayano stood. "We don't have a moment to lose," she said with renewed vigor. She rested a hand on her katana's hilt. "We'll take the fastest cart we can to the Academy's waterfall. Are you both ready?"

Mizuki stood with Azrael. "Hell yeah," she said firmly.

She managed to conceal her terror. Somehow.


	17. Chapter 17

**FALL SEVEN TIMES**

 **by Ulquiorra9000**

 **Chapter 17**

"Ugh. _Finally_!"

Mizuki groaned and picked up the pace as she and Ayano and Azrael slipped out of a copse of trees and toward a sleepy town further down a dirt road that evening. Three tense days of dodging Phyrexian thopter scout squadrons and cyborg samurai patrols had worn her nerves _quite_ thin!

"Mizuki, slow down," Ayano said, but she couldn't keep an amused grin off her face. "We're all tired, I know. But we should be clear for now."

"I concur," Azrael puffed, red in the face from hiking all day, his rust-red hair askew. "This region of Kamigawa is more rugged than I imagined."

"Yes, and it _used_ to be popular with bandits for that very reason," Ayano said as the group neared the town's front gate. "Traveling merchants wouldn't see them until it was too late. But with the invasion, I suppose that many bandits have already been captured and... converted?"

Azrael nodded. "I believe that's a good term for what they're doing."

Mizuki felt a chill. By now, she and the others had spotted makeshift "conversion" buildings along rivers and streams, where chrome-armored golems and spindly Phyrexian surgeons experimented on groups of captured bandits and vagrants. The horrors that walked back out of the labs were _not_ human, not any longer.

So _this_ is what it took to solve Kamigawa's roadside bandit problem!

Mizuki had never found irony very funny.

"Think they'll have a cozy ryokan?" Mizuki asked, trying to put some cheer in her voice as the torchlit town came nearer.

"Perhaps," Ayano said. "If we move out at first light, we should reach the Minamo waterfall system by early tomorrow evening. We may be in a relatively safe region of Kamigawa, but that will quickly change once we approach the siege."

Mizuki had no doubt of that. Accoding to Ayano, daimyo Kirinji's coalition army was on the march and near the besieged Minamo Academy, over two thousand assorted samurai, clerics, ninjas, battle mages, archers, and monks cobbled together from various mercenary gangs, small noble clans, and local security forces. Friendly lantern kami had scouted out the safest route for the coalition army and Ayano's covert squad to take, but that safety wouldn't last for long.

Loud, metallic shrieks shattered the air.

"It's them!" Azrael shouted, and he wrapped himself in his dense blue-black mana aura. He switched on the flame rubies in his Fiora bracers, his hair tossed and buffeted by the combined ambient magic.

Mizuki, all fatigue forgotten, cloaked herself in her protective green-black aura and drew her enchanted short sword. Its red-white magic glowed in the evening twilight, and nearby, Ayano's green-white mana aura shone like a beacon.

From the other side of a hill emerged about six Phyrexians, a mixed lot of artifact monsters and refined Kamigawa natives.

But something was different.

"Their aura... it's white!" Ayano warned her fellows. Her eyes were locked on the incoming monsters, her body in a traditional ready stance.

Mizuki gave them another look. "They... what?"

With frightening speed, the Phyrexian squad blocked off the town entrance and advanced on Mizuki's squad. Four of them were converted kitsune, but they didn't have chrome plating or surgical needles like the other Phyrexians.

The kitsunes' faces were enveloped in off-white masks, etched and scratched from earlier fighting. Black oil leaked from the dark eyeholes like tears, and their half-machine bodies had porcelain armor plating and thin tubes of oil. Their feet had long claws of white metal, streaked with black oil.

The freakish kitsune sprinted and swung their crooked katanas. Ayano deftly blocked a sword strike and knocked the odd kitsune's blade aside, and her own katana pierced the cyborg's chest between its armor plates.

The kitsune, however, didn't go down. It grunted in pain, then seized Ayano's blade and pulled it back out. Then it delivered a clawed kick that knocked the noble girl back, and another kitsune moved over to finish her off.

"Ayano!" Mizuki tensed to go help her friend, but too late: another Phyrexian cut her off, and it was no kitsune. It towered over her with twice a man's height, its body entirely machine, oil, and porcelain plating. Although humanoid, it had _four_ arms, each with a short sword. It twirled these blades in the air, its eyeless mask face leering at her.

"Uh, Azrael... got any ideas?" Mizuki blurted, her voice tight with terror as she took a few steps back. She held her enchanted sword in a defensive position, but the weapon seemed pitiful before this monster.

"Got my hands full here," Azrael warned her, as another, smaller golem confronted him. "Try and lure your opponent to me!"

 _Yeah, I'll try, all right!_ Mizuki yelped in terror as the huge golem slashed its blades through the air in a dizzying assault pattern. The swords hissed and whooshed through the evening air, and it was all Mizuki could do to evade them. She vaulted, rolled, and twisted, but she felt the blades slice off bits of her hair and slice up her skin in shallow but stinging blows.

 _I can't keep this up!_

Mizuki grunted and parried one sword blow with her short sword, then blocked another strike and rolled under a third to reach the golem's blind spot. Her own blade scored a charred slash across the golem's chest plating, but it only seemed to make the giant angrier.

"Ooooof!" Mizuki felt the golem ram her stomach with a sword pommel, and she rolled away, watching from down on the ground as the golem advanced to finish her off. _Like hell!_

Mizuki rolled away from another sword blow, and the weapon cut right into the earth, sending up a spray of dirt. She sprang to her feet and hurried over to Azrael, who was busy fending off his opponent's sword strikes with his enchanted fists.

"Good! Now draw out an attack!" Azrael cried.

"You're askin' for an awful lot!" Mizuki shouted back.

"Mizuki, hurry!"

Baring her teeth, Mizuki spread her arms wide. "Come and get me, bastard!"

She didn't know if the Phyrexian golem even understood her. It silently lumbered over, raising its upper two arms to prepare for a savage strike.

Mizuki focused her sword's enchantment and jabbed the blade toward her opponent. A helix of red-white mana bore into the golem's chest plating, and acrid smoke poured from the point of contact. Mizuki dug her sandaled feet into the ground to brace herself as she poured more energy into the attack.

 _Yes!_ The focused spell finally boiled its way through the golem's plating and torched its insides, and the stink of burning oil choked the air. This time, the golem shouted something in a strange language with its deep, metallic voice. It took a step forward and slashed down its swords, all defense forgotten.

Mizuki sprang away, and just as the golem's two swords cleaved deep into the ground, Azrael slipped around his opponent and wove his mana together into a new spell. He wove his arms in an arcane pattern, like a puppet master, and two thick ribbons of blue-black-red mana snaked out of his bracers. With more motions, he guided the ribbons through the air and into the huge golem's neck and wounded chest.

Once again, the golem roared in pain and cursed at them in its strange Phyrexian langauge as its insides cooked. But still it stood.

The golem flung one of its other swords through the air, and the sudden attack caught Azrael off-guard. The thrown blade grazed his ribs, and Azrael was thrown back and onto his knees, hands clasping the sudden wound.

Azrael's mana tendrils dissolved, and the smaller golem moved in to finish off its vulnerable opponent. It raised a blade to behead him -

"NO!" Ayano burst onto the scene, her enchanted katana stained with the masked kitsunes' oily blood. Ayano had already suffered several wounds all over, but her green-white mana was already sealing them as she moved to aid Azrael. Her katana caught the small golem's sword in mid-air, and she hardened her other arm's skin to rock. A punch sent the smaller golem reeling, and her sword took off its head in one strike.

Ayano, however, was clearly exhausted, and she wobbled, her mana aura flickering. "Mizuki! Look out!" she shouted.

Mizuki whirled around. The larger golem had wrenched its two upper swords free and slashed them through the air, even faster than before. Mizuki hastily brought up her blade to block, but once the golem's swords clashed against hers, the sheer pressure flung her onto her back, and she rolled away, stunned. _Dammit!_

Now the golem lumbered after her again, and the sight of it infuriated her. _Why hasn't it gone down yet?!_ She got to her hands and knees and thrust out her sword, once again channeling its mana into a blistering helix. But she had nearly exhausted its inner mana already, and only a narrow helix issued forth. The golem was barely slowed down by the spell that struck its belly, and it raised its blades to finish her.

Then Mizuki's helix sputtered out, and the enchantment, what little was left of it, condensed on the blade. It was melee or nothing at this point.

Then Azrael stumbled over, one hand still clamped to his wound, his other hand free to guide a new mana ribbon. The tri-colored spell snaked through the air and wrapped itself around the golem's ankle, and the beast fell flat onto its belly with an earth-shuddering thump. The golem grunted and started to push itself back upright.

"Mizuki! Now!" Azrael cried. Then Mizuki stared in shock as his mana ribbon parted from his hand and flew right at her.

At first, Mizuki thought that Azrael had lost control of the spell, but instead, it wrapped itself around her sword, layered over the white-red enchantment. The blade glowed and hummed with new power.

"YES!" Mizuki knew what she had to do. She gathered up her strength and leaped at the golem, then cleaved the golem's bowed head clean off in one final stroke.

With a spray of sparks and hot oil, the golem's severed, eyeless head hit the ground and rolled away. The headless body fell back down and went totally limp.

Mizuki, panting, stepped away from the golem and powered off her sword. At the mental command, Azrael's own spell dissolved as well. "E-everyone okay?" she croaked.

Azrael shuffled over, his red hair in damp clumps. "I'll live," he wheezed. "By the gods... this is new. Horribly new. There's another faction of Phyrexians at work, no doubt."

Ayano joined them, lending her green-white mana for healing. "The coalition is moving through the area where these attackers had come from," she said, glancing over in that direction. Dread filled her eyes. "Perhaps the Phyrexians called in reinforcements to intercept the coalition and break it up?"

"That is possible. Likely, even," Azrael said as Ayano pressed a healing palm to his torso. "Is there anything we can do to draw them away?"

Ayano took a moment to think it over. "Perhaps we could lure away a few scouting parties," she said cautiously. "But any more than that, and we'd quickly be surrounded and overwhelmed."

"We might be surrounded already," Mizuki said nervously. She scanned the horizon for more Phyrexians. None appeared. Yet.

Ayano nodded. "In light of this ambush, perhaps we should get provisions from the town and camp in the forest for added cover. It seems that the Phyrexians mainly attack proper settlements in order to destroy armed resistance or abduct civilians for conversion. At this point, we cannot afford to be caught in the crossfire until we regroup with coalition forces."

There was no denying that. The Phyrexians still had probes to search the wilderness for runaways, but it was better than spending the night in a town whose very existence advertised civilians ripe for the taking.

As night fell, Mizuki settled into a sleeping bag near Ayano and Azrael. They didn't dare make a campfire. Better to keep this a covert op. While they still could.

"Mizuki," Ayano said quietly from her sleeping bag.

Mizuki couldn't see the noble girl, but she felt reassured just hearing her voice. "What's up?"

"I... want to thank you, and Azrael, once again for all that you're doing for us. For my father and his clan, the townsfolk we've met... everyone."

"Hey, it's no trouble," Mizuki said. She tried to sound offhand, but she doubted that the noble girl bought it.

"When I saw you and Azrael enter my father's court, I had a good feeling about you both," Ayano said earnestly in the darkness. Her sleeping bag rustled a bit. "Without your help, my father and Osamu would still be under Phyrexian control. Where would we be then?"

Mizuki made an exasperated grin and shook her head, even if no one could see it. "That's all moot, y'know," she said. "We're gonna be fine. Your dad's coalition is probably the biggest mortal army on Kamigawa in... centuries, I bet."

"I am confident that daimyo Kirinji can handle this new threat," Azrael added. "Have faith, lady Ayano."

Ayano took a second to respond. "I certainly do, but... I had thought myself so attuned to utsushiyo and its affairs, and I was soon to study kakuriyo as well. All this has taught me such... humility! Especially when a villager girl and an otherworldly man are the ones making survival possible. I -"

"Ayano. _Come on_ ," Mizuki said, but her grin was wider. "You can kick ass in a scrap, and your connections are really useful. Don't be jealous of _me_. Us Kamigawa girls are better than that."

Ayano chuckled. "A fair point, Mizuki. Thank you. I... don't think I can put in words how grateful I am to you both."

Azrael thanked her and was soon asleep, but Ayano's words struck a chord in Mizuki. _A debt of gratitude..._

Mizuki lay on her back, trying to see the stars through the light forest's canopy. She only saw a few of the brighter ones. Where would _she_ be without otherwordly help? Without Veldor and Zoira's planeswalking experience, Veldor's eccentric genius, Zoira's tracking and hunting skills, or Morrel's dogged faith and loyalty...

She'd have been Haijin-no-Imari's tortured victim forever!

She pushed that thought away. Ever since getting her planeswalker Spark activated and seeing the vast Multiverse, she'd expected to live as a loner and freak... now she ached as she missed Morrel all over again. He had his own life and battles to deal with on Bant, and Mizuki had her own problems here on Kamigawa. They both knew their duties.

But damn... Mizuki traced a finger along her lips, and she remembered the sensation of Morrel's lips on hers, the way he'd hold her close, how she felt perfectly safe with him.

Mizuki rolled on her side and fell asleep mulling over extraplanar boyfriends and crazed planeswalkers. In her dreams, Morrel was inside a hazy fogbank, calling Mizuki's name while swords clashed, invisible, in the background. Mizuki called his name back and ran to his voice, but she never found him. Then the ground beneath her bare feet turned to sludgy black oil, and loud shrieks and the metallic rasp of oversized surgical equipment surrounded her -

Mizuki bolted upright, her hair in damp clumps from sweat. She stared around the place; it was the crack of dawn, and she saw Azrael and Ayano still asleep, Azrael with an arm draped across his forehead, and Ayano... she was drooling a bit! Some noble girl _she_ was!

 _Come on. Clear your head, girl,_ Mizuki told herself. She rolled to face the other way to get a bit more rest before Azrael would wake everyone up to continue the trek to Minamo Academy.

Just a little more rest... a bit of comfort before the biggest battle yet.


	18. Chapter 18

**FALL SEVEN TIMES**

 **by Ulquiorra9000**

 **Chapter 18**

"Come on! We have to move!"

In the morning, it was Ayano who breathlessly urged her companions onwards through Kamigawa's rough terrain toward Minamo Waterfall, and perhaps her haste was spurred by the evidence of further Phyrexian activity in this area.

Case in point: the townsfolk were gone, and oily, clawed footprints led right into and back out of the town. There was barely any sign of a struggle, either. The whole town, abducted while Mizuki's had party slept, safe in the forest.

Time was nearly out.

"Ayano. Do you sense any sign of the coalition?" Azrael asked as the party quickly climbed over a rocky hill, a stiff breeze tossing his red hair.

Ayano stretched out a hand, green-white mana pulsing on her palm. "I... I'm only getting faint traces," she admitted. "In the correct direction. Let's keep moving."

But their rate of progress still frustrated Ayano, and when the party reached a trade post, Ayano found a horse trader and shoved a handful of gold coins into his hands.

"Missy, this is much more than enough -" the bewildered man started.

"Keep it," Ayano bit back over her shoulder. She mounted a chestnut-colored horse with ease, taking hold of the reins. "Mizuki! Azrael! Let's ride!"

 _I like it when she's riled up,_ Mizuki thought as she climbed onto the smallest horse, a gray mare with black spots. _We needed a warrior princess, and we got one! Hell yeah!_

Azrael settled onto a black horse's saddle, and the three of them raced through the trading town, past human, kitsune, and orochi merchants and back into the wilderness, racing up a dirt trail through a hilly forest. The horses' supply bags rattled from the speed.

"Just keep an eye out for Phyrexian scout squads, both on foot and airborne," Ayano said. "This is bound to attract attention. But we _need_ the speed!"

 _Not gonna argue, princess._ Mizuki kept her eyes open, but so far, the forest was ordinary, with birds cawing in the branches, foxes sneaking around, squirrels chattering...

The air grew damp as the party emerged from the forest and onto a grassy plains, pushing further eastwards. Was the legendary Minamo Waterfall nearby? It had to be! Mizuki grinned as she spurred her horse on, and she activated her black-green mana aura just in case. She prepared to quickly reach into her backpack and retrieve her enchanted Fiora sword. And nearby, Azrael fired up his formidable mana aura. Ayano soon followed suit.

"Thopters!" Azrael warned, glancing up.

Mizuki saw them, too: a trio of metallic, spindly bird-like constructs that glided on bat-like wings. Their bodies' chrome plating had a bluish hue, their eyeless heads covered in metal spines. The Phyrexian scouts descended on Mizuki's party like vultures, letting out an odd wail.

Azrael thrust his left fist into the air. From his left bracer, a small fireball shot out and vaporized a thopter. Only smoke and droplets of black oil were left of it.

"Whoa!" Mizuki blurted. "That was new."

"Devices like these reward innovation," Azrael huffed as the other two thopters retreated west. "I've studied them before. I'm an artificer, remember?"

Mizuki grinned. "Sure."

But her grin faded when more and more Phyrexian thopters appeared all over the sky, near and far. The morning sun glinted off their bodies, the creatures gliding leisurely on the wind. And on the ground, Mizuki saw Phyrexian raiding squads: golems with giant needle appendages, cyborg samurai with oily katanas, mechanical kitsune with oversized claws, and metallic horrors of random shapes and sizes. So far, just blue-type Phyrexians. But were there white-types lurking, too?

"There!" Ayano cried, pointing. "A battalion! At last!"

Mizuki sighed with relief when she saw a proper Kamigawa army: companies of samurai with banners of various united clans, squads of robed battle mages, burly mercenaries in red and black armor, beast tamers, and platoons of ninjas. Everyone was on horses, tamed tigers, or even stags.

And the Phyrexians were converging on them.

"I recognize the banners," Ayano said as she steered her horse to help the coalition force. Mizuki and Azrael followed her. "This is Battalion C, one of the support units. There's nearly five hundred individuals within it. If they perish, Battalions A and B might not last long against the main Phyrexian army at Minamo."

"So, we've gotta support the support," Mizuki commented.

"I'll do all I can," Azrael promised.

"You'd better," Mizuki said, "because we've got incoming!"

More thopters descended on Mizuki's trio while a group of small, metallic Phyrexian monsters intercepted them. The smaller creatures had wolf-like shapes, but elongated, skull-like heads, their oily muscles visible between plates of chrome and bone. Their long tails were tipped in blades, their tongues replaced by large hypodermic needles.

Azrael steered his horse away from the Phyrexian wolves and shot his fist into the air. Another small fireball issued forth and obliterated a thopter, then another thopter went down. However, three more thopters swerved around Azrael's flames and rammed him from the side. And being the size of eagles, the metal thopters had serious impact.

"Dammit!" Azrael was thrown clear off his horse's saddle and rolled to a stop on the ground. He held himself steady on one knee, but two Phyrexian wolves raced over to finish him off.

Ayano tugged hard on her horse's reins, and the steed whinnied as Ayano forced it to turn sharply to the right. The horse thundered closer to Azrael, and Ayano drew her enchanted katana. The blade slashed through the air as soon as Ayano got close enough, and her blade slammed into a wolf's ribcage.

The blade failed to slice into the creature, but the sheer impact threw it far away, and it tumbled awkwardly across the ground.

"Good one." Azrael sprang to his feet and delivered a hard kick, accentuated with blue-black mana, at the other nearby wolf. His booted foot knocked the wolf aside and caved in its metal skull, but the creature recovered with astonishing speed and pounced on its strong hind legs.

The wolf tackled Azrael and pinned him to the ground. At the same time, two more wolves hurried over, and their needle-tongues pierced his body, passing right through his mana aura.

Mizuki's stomach clenched. "Azrael, hang on!" She steered her horse closer to the wolves and drew her Fiora sword, its red-white enchantment flaring to life. With a shout, she sliced off a wolf's front legs in a blast of sparks, sizzling white mana, and the stench of burning muscle. The wolf shrieked and collapsed, scuffing its hind legs in the ground. Then Ayano raced by on her horse and impaled the immobile wolf in its neck. The cyborg canine went still.

This distraction bought Azrael enough time to squirm away from the other wolves, but he was going pale and weakening, his mana aura sputtering and fading.

"I'll handle them," Mizuki told Ayano. "Help Azrael, okay?"

Ayano nodded and dismounted, placing herself between Azrael and the wolves and thopters. Mizuki, meanwhile, strafed the wolves and fired thin helixes of red-white mana. The spell burned the wolves' chrome plating, boiling away layers of protection. Furious, the wolves turned and charged at her.

 _Hurry, Ayano!_ Mizuki spurred her horse onwards in a new direction, and she was horribly aware of the wolves sprinting right behind her. Even the wolf that Ayano had flung aside earlier had caught up, making for three pursuers. Mizuki doubted that she could slay them all without risking serious harm.

Mizuki chanced a glance over her shoulder and saw Ayano swatting away the thopters with her sword while trying to unclasp a medical bottle from her carrying pouch. All the while, Azrael was limp on the ground, his chest heaving with desperate breaths.

There was no helping it. Mizuki steered her horse hard to the left, and as it galloped desperately away from the pursuing wolves, Mizuki pointed her short sword and issued another red-white helix.

The spell only grazed one thopter's bat-like wing, but the distraction gave Ayano her chance to cleave the wounded thopter in half with a single vertical katana strike. Then, with the aid of another mana helix, Ayano dispatched another thopter, then another.

Ayano clearly had only seconds to act, so she hastily uncork the bottle and pour its contents down Azrael's throat. Then she pressed her enchanted left palm over his heart and pressed hard.

From her horse, Mizuki watched as Azrael gave a deep gasp and clamored to his feet, his mana aura fully restored.

Then Mizuki's horse tossed back its head and screamed.

 _What the - no!_ Mizuki leaped off her horse just in time. She saw blood gushing from her horse's severed hind legs, victims of the cyborg wolves' blade tails. The horse crashed and skidded, and a wolf severed its neck with a casual bite.

Now the three wolves advanced in Mizuki, their ears perked, their needle tongues held out and ready. Their bladed tails swished back and forth in excitement.

Mizuki let out a cry and pointed her Fiora sword. Her hair ruffled from the charging red-white mana, and a full-strength mana helix caught one wolf head-on. Melted chrome blasted everywhere as Mizuki applied full pressure, and when she finished the spell, the wolf was badly mangled, but not dead. Panting, trembling from its wounds, it limped forward with its fellows to devour Mizuki.

 _Whoa, these things are tough!_ Mizuki held up her sword to defend herself, but the wolves split into a three-pronged attack formation. She glanced from one to another, trying to figure out a good defense.

The wolves pounced.

Ayano sprinted onto the scene, pumping her arms to go faster. She converted her skin into green-white rock, and the Phyrexian wolves bounced right off her. Then Ayano swung her katana, and the enchanted blade finished off the injured wolf.

"Hell yeah!" Mizuki placed her back to Ayano's to eliminate any blind spots, and the girls fended off the other wolves, scoring shallow wounds on the beasts every time they came close. But the wolves were persistent and tireless, and Mizuki felt herself tiring, and her sword's enchantment was also wearing out. She panted as she deflected another pounce attack, her sword clashing against the wolf's oily chrome claws.

Then Azrael sprinted onto the scene. He intercepted a wolf in mid-leap and delivered a mighty series of punches from his enchanted fists, and his knuckles pounded deep dents into the wolf's chrome armor. Oily muscle crunched and splintered under the pressure, and the wolf snarled in protest.

Mizuki pointed her sword and used up most of its remaining mana to release another seething vortex. The ranged attack blasted through the wolf's damaged armor and boiled away its insides. The beast blew apart into ash.

"Just two left!" Ayano called out, but before she could make another move, three spindly thopters descended on her.

Ayano swiped her katana through the air and sliced a thopter in half, but the other two knocked her off her horse, and just as Ayano landed on the ground, the two cyborg wolves closed in on her. They chomped down on her arms with their steel jaws, blue mana leaking from their gums as they applied terrific pressure.

"N... no!" Ayano grimaced and flooded her skin with green-white mana to resist the wolves' teeth, but Mizuki could see cracks forming in her defenses.

"Mizuki! Cover me!" Azrael barked. He charged right for Ayano, and at the movement, the two remaining thopters flew right at him, claws extended.

Mizuki panted for breath and pointed her short sword. Her mana helix issued forth, but the spell was weakening, and the thopters evaded it entirely. One slammed right into Azrael and knocked him over. He sprawled across the grassy plain.

Once again, Mizuki fired her mana beam, and she burned off one thopter's left wing. The thopter sank in the air, and Azrael caught it barehanded. He squeezed, and his mana-enhanced fingers crushed it into scrap.

Just as quickly, Azrael reached out with his other hand, and a blue-black-red mana ribbon shot out and snared the last thopter, dragging it right back. Azrael clapped his hands together and demolished it.

Mizuki joined Azrael and leaped on a wolf. She let out a cry, and her enchanted short sword raked one wolf's chrome-plated back. The blade failed to breach the wolf's defenses, but it forced the creature to let Ayano's arm go and turn around. Just as it did so, Azrael delivered a hard kick and pulverized the wolf's left eyeball.

The wolf yowled in pain, black oil leaking from the crushed muscle around its ruined eye. This gave Mizuki her chance to thrust her Fiora sword deep down the wolf's throat and charge its enchantment to full power.

In seconds, the cyborg wolf burned to ash from the inside, and its hollow chrome armor collapsed.

Meanwhile, the other wolf let go of Ayano's other arm and slashed its razor tail through the air. Azrael caught the blade in midair and charged it with his blue-black mana. The mana's deadly touch melted the blade in Azrael's hands, and the wolf, clearly dismayed, swiped its claws.

Azrael grunted as the oily chrome claws gouged at his chest, but he didn't dare let go. Instead, he tugged on the wolf's tail and held it upside down. With his bracers adding red mana to his hand, he pressed his left hand's fingers together into a blade and thrust his hand right into the wolf's chest, through its armor plates.

Like Mizuki had done, Azrael burned the wolf away from the inside. He tossed aside its charred remains.

"Azrael! You're hurt," Ayano yelped. She hurried over and pressed her hands to Azrael's wounds, and her mana started mending the flesh.

"You're hurt too," Azrael grunted. He was right; Ayano had powered off her skin's defenses, and her arms were slick with blood from where the wolves' teeth had punctured her skin.

Ayano shook her head. "You're our best fighter, Azrael. Stay healthy and keep me safe, okay?" She forced a smile.

"Hey, Higure can do that, too," Mizuki pointed out.

Ayano glanced over at the motley warriors of Battalion C, who were turning the tide against the mixed white-blue Phyrexian attack force. "For now, it appears that we have the upper hand. I will draw Higure away from my father's castle _only_ if need be. We were dearly outnumbered at Yamai-no-Zenju, but here, my father's coalition is our best route to victory."

Mizuki shrugged. "Okay, sure."

Azrael's horse had run off and Mizuki's poor steed was slain, so the three of them clamored onto Ayano's horse (it bore their combined weight easily since Mizuki and Ayano were fairly light), and the steed galloped to the coalition army. By now, many samurai and monks had fallen before the Phyrexians' oily blades and claws, but the rest fought valiantly.

"My sword's almost outta juice," Mizuki warned Ayano, holding the blade out for emphasis.

Ayano frowned. "Juice?"

"Its enchantment is almost out of power," Mizuki explained hastily. "I dunno if I can fight like this."

Ayano smiled. "Don't worry, Mizuki. My father's agents are among the coalition; some of the battle mages are skilled in recharging enchanted swords, armor, and jewelry."

"But this sword is foreign. It's from this plane called Fiora. Azrael gave it to me."

"I'm sure the mages can handle it," Ayano said briskly. "Now - oh, my _word_!"

Just as the Phyrexians were scattering before the coalition's might, the very ground started to quake. Then, a huge disk of earth erupted like a volcano, and Ayano's horse whinnied in terror and cut a wide arc to move away from the sudden calamity.

"What's happening?" Azrael cried over the loud rumbling noise.

"Hell if I know!" Mizuki hollered.

Something massive, spiny, and shiny sprouted from the collapsed ground, a bizarre _thing_ that kept on coming, its long body actually composed of two thick, plated bodies coiled tightly against each other to form a whole.

Then Mizuki saw the monster's mouth open wide. Green mana glowed deep in its throat, and hundreds of metallic teeth shone in the morning light.

The beast let out a deep, metallic screech that seemed to shake the heavens.

"What is _that_?" Ayano cried, her voice shrill with terror. "Azrael, what -"

"I have never seen such a thing before," Azrael admitted, his face paper-white with dread. "But it's heading right for the coalition."

He was right: the massive, wurm-like monster fully emerged, probably over two hundred feet long, and slithered right toward the coalition's ranks. The lesser Phyrexians cheered at its presence and resumed the attack, clearly galvanized by this... _thing_... leading them.

Mizuki berated herself for thinking that this battle was won.

The Phyrexians had that funny effect of robbing all hope from you.


	19. Chapter 19

**FALL SEVEN TIMES**

 **by Ulquiorra9000**

 **Chapter 19**

"How long d'you think the coalition can hold out against that thing?" Mizuki asked tensely. She couldn't tear her eyes from the massive wurm creature that snaked its way toward Battalion C's warriors.

"I couldn't say," Ayano said, "but I'd wager not very long." Her mana aura still radiated strong pulses of green and white mana. Even after healing herself and Azrael and Mizuki, her power was still formidable. Did the sight of Kamigawa's destroyers galvanize her power?

Almost definitely.

Ayano urged her horse toward the battle at a mad sprint, but already, Battalion C's warriors clashed with the Phyrexians once again. Companies of samurai galloped on their steeds to meet the mechanical horrors halfway, their banners fluttering, their armor enchanted by battle mage spells. A handful of budoka monks joined the samurai, their brawny bodies blessed by vine-like kami far beyond human strength.

Blades clashed.

"We need a plan for that wurm beast, if Battalion C's commanders don't have one already," Azrael said. "A disorganized response won't last long."

"No kidding," Mizuki said faintly. She watched as the huge wurm scooped its toothy maw along the ground, and it gobbled up a handful of Battalion C's warriors just like _that_. The other samurai and mages around the wurm scattered hastily, but that left them open to Phyrexian flanking attacks. The samurai only barely fended off the assault.

Then Mizuki's eyes widened. "Oh!"

Ayano tensed. "What is it?"

Mizuki actually grinned. "Why not repeat ourselves? That wurm thing uses its mouth to fight. Remember what we did to Akuta-Ne?"

Azrael made an amused noise. "I certainly do. But I loathe to admit that this creature is even more fearsome than Akuta-Ne was. And we didn't even destroy Akuta-Ne with those enchanted fireworks. We just drove it away."

Mizuki's gut clenched. "I know, but..."

Ayano glanced over her shoulder. "We made do with whatever we could find at Yamai-no-Zenju," she said boldly. Her eyes were like steel. "But this is my father's coalition, a proper defense force. We will have military-grade provisions on hand. We only need to acquire them."

"Good point." Mizuki felt herself relax a bit. "So, are you gonna summon Higure again?"

"Only if I need to," Ayano said. "I don't want to risk his life unnecessarily. And we still have to save some resources for the actual battle at Minamo. What we have here is the prelude."

"I understand," Azrael said.

"And after all..." Ayano smiled. "You two do a fine job fighting with me. Have faith. We _will_ drive off the Phyrexians today."

Damn it all, Ayano's spirit was infectious!

The sounds of battle, the metallic clashes, the screams, all filled Mizuki's ears and shook the air as Ayano's horse joined the fray. The front line grew blurred as clusters of Phyrexian cyborgs and samurai and monks struck each other's armies. Bodies fell everywhere in flashes of mana and slashes of katanas and oily claws.

"Where is Battalion C's heavy ordinance?" Azrael shouted over the din. As he spoke, he threw out his fists and hurled mini-fireballs at nearby Phyrexians.

"Let me see... over there!" Ayano steered her steed toward a caravan of supply wagons, further from the front lines. She brought her horse to a halt and dismounted.

Mizuki got the cue to dismount. "What's the plan, princess?"

"This is a supply wagon for Battalion B," Ayano explained. "Backup ammunition... for incendiary trebuchet loads."

Mizuki watched in awe as Ayano collected a few heavy bags from a wagon. "What's in them?"

"Black powder mixed with various chemicals and compounds, and enchanted for maximum impact," Ayano said. "This ammunition is actually an akki invention, as are the trebuchets that fire them. At Minamo, you will see Battalion B making use of this technology."

Mizuki thought of the akki goblins, the hard-shelled, long-nosed denizens of the Sokenzan Mountains. Rarely did the akki cooperate with humans and kitsune, but clearly, a clan or two in the coalition had struck a deal. Maybe the looming Phyrexians had inspired the mutual trust?

So even the akki were feeling the pressure.

Ayano dragged the ammo bags to Azrael, then held out her arm and infused Azrael's skin with her mana. Her green-white mana aura flickered from the strain, but it held. "Azrael, this should let you carry these heavy bags," she told him. "Get to that wurm. Mizuki and I will escort you."

Azrael looked over at the marauding wurm and nodded. "Of course."

Ayano collected two spare horses from the supply caravan, and once she and Mizuki mounted up, they set off and escorted Azrael's horse across the grimy battlefield. Stray arrows, sword swings, and spells kept shooting past Mizuki, and she had to duck to avoid a few of them. If this was the pre-battle, the main conflict for Minamo would be insane!

Every one of Mizuki's instincts screamed at her to get _away_ from the massive artifact wurm, but she bared her teeth and kept pressing on. She had to trust Azrael to take that horrible thing down!

A nearby Phyrexian humanoid roared and swung its long claws at Mizuki's horse, trying to cleave it in half. Mizuki already had her sword out and knocked aside the cyborg's claws, then slashed its head off in one clean stroke. She barely finished when a thopter descended on her with its claws outstretched. Mizuki pointed her sword tip and took careful aim. A thin mana helix vaporized the thopter.

Ayano, meanwhile, blew apart any Phyrexians that got in her way, her katana showing no mercy. "Almost there!" she cried. "Azrael, get ready!"

By now, the three were deep into Phyrexian formations, and the coalition warriors were too far to provide backup. That left only a narrow window to get this done before the Phyrexians cut Mizuki off entirely fromt friendly lines. Only seconds left...!  
Among the chrome-armored Phyrexians stood a cluster of porcelain-armored golems, and they lumbered forth to intercept Mizuki's squad. Some had four arms, others bearing whip-like barbed chains or maces.

"White Phyrexians!" Mizuki hollered. "Watch out for 'em!"

Azrael threw out a decent-sized fireball that slammed right into a large Phyrexian golem. But the flames only left a shallow, charred indent on its chest. The beast brushed off the attack and swung its mace.

Ayano hurried over and placed herself between the golem and Azrael. Her enchanted katana stopped the mace cold, and Ayano's arms trembled with the effort of keeping it at bay. "Azrael! Now!" she shrieked.

A safe distance away, Azrael leaped off his horse with sudden grace and speed, propelled by his blue-black mana. He actually landed on a large golem's shoulder and jumped off, long before the golem realized what was happening. Then, Azrael ran a slalom through several more befuddled blue Phyrexians and closed in on the massive wurm's open maw.

Ayano's green-white spell glowed bright on Azrael's arms as the man carried the two heavy ammo bags to his goal. Then, just as the wurm's many eyes spotted Azrael, the artificer hurled both trebuchet ammo bags right into the wurm's open mouth.

As the bags flew through the wurm's maw, Azrael took careful aim and fired two tiny fireballs from his bracers' rubies. The fireballs swallowed up the ammo bags deep in the wurm's throat.

Bright reddish-white light erupted from between the wurm's armor plates, so bright that Mizuki, Ayano, and the Phyrexians briefly covered their faces and winced.

A deafening chain of explosions rocked the wurm from head to tail, and flames shot from between its plating. The creature shrieked and squirmed in agony as more explosions tore it apart from the inside. It went limp and rolled over, black smoke pouring from its mouth.

Mizuki couldn't help a cheer. "Ayano! We did it!" she shouted gleefully.

The Phyrexians, however, backed up and made deep, metallic noises in their throats. Were they... _laughing_?

With a groan of effort, the wurm stirred, then uncoiled its body. Even its head came apart, its two bodies slithering loudly on the battlefield's boot-flattened dirt.

Azrael got back on his horse and raced over to Mizuki and Ayano. "Something is wrong!" he shouted. "The wurm -"

Ayano was paper-white, her eyes wide. "We seem to have underestimated our enemies once again."

The wurm had fully split in half, each new wurm thinner than the first one but fully functional. One had murky green-black mana in its throat, the other, vivid green-white. Both wurms roared in anger and hunger.

Mizuki took a deep breath. "RUN!" she screamed.

The surrounding samurai and battle mages drew back from the two wurm halves, but already, the other Phyrexians were advancing and cutting down the Kamigawa defenders. Worse, each wurm half slithered across the battlefield, and each gobbled up the coalition's warriors wherever they found them. One spread a noxious vapor that rendered the samurai defenseless, while the other seemed to grow with each person that it devoured.

Ayano raised her katana. "I am Ayano Hatsumoto Kirinji, scion of the Kirinji clan!" she shouted. "If you want to survive, rally around me! Generals, gather your men!"

Mizuki flinched as a wave of white mana radiated from Ayano's body while she spoke, and the Phyrexians faltered, surprised by the mortal girl's boldness.

Galloping hooves answered the call.

"We hear you, princess Kirinji!" boomed a familiar voice.

Mizuki laughed with relief when she saw tai-sa (Colonel) Kokuda and his forest samurai approach, all mounted on stags. Green mana pulsed on the stags' hooves and antlers, and Kokuda carried his banner in one hand, his katana in the other.

The forest samurai got to work.

Where the other samurai and battle mages faltered, Kokuda and his men charged in and reversed the tide. Cyborg samurai, kitsune, and artifact horrors shrieked as samurai blades split them in half. The stags charged with utter ferocity, and they lowered their antlers to impale Phyrexians on their points.

More warriors of the coalition converged on Ayano and tai-sa Kokuda, shouting in defiance and rage. The Phyrexians snarled and regrouped to attack the massed samurai en masse, and the melee resumed. And once again, the two wurm halves snaked over and began devouring the samurai and monks two or three at a time.

"First squad! Take out the green-white wurm! Get mage support," tai-sa Kokuda shouted. He pointed. "Now!"

At once, twelve of his men charged at the wurm that was growing with each person it consumed. Along the way, a number of monks and mages joined them, their colorful robes billowing as their steeds raced to catch up with the samurai. The mages threw out their hands and plated the forest samurai with enchantments, and other battle mages hurled fireballs or lightning at the marauding wurm.

The wurm grated and roared in pain as flames and lightning burnt away its armor plates one at a time. It thrashed around, and its metallic tail swatted away a few kitsune samurai, shattering their armor and bones alike from the sheer force. In retaliation, three budoka monks, all swathed in forest kami, hurried over and seized the wurm by its tail. The kami clearly strained against the wurm's strength, but their plan worked: the wurm was trapped in place, totally vulnerable to attack.

With their stags' hooves kicking up dirt with each gallop, the forest samurai closed in on their target. Heavily-modified katanas slashed off pieces of the wurm's toothy maw, or else pried off armor plating from its head. The wurm shrieked again and thrashed about, but it couldn't escape. And it couldn't deal with so many samurai at once, attacking from such a wide angle.

The coalition forces cheered as Kokuda's men finally tore through the wurm's inner mechanisms, and black oil gushed everywhere as the wurm was torn apart under the katana blades. With a final gurgle, the wurm's pieces scattered on the hoof-flattened battleground.

Then the other wurm half reared itself and roared.

Noxious, green-black mist spread and rolled across the battlefield like a fog. Samurai, monks, and mages alike staggered under its effects, and Mizuki stared in horror as their skin bubbled and blistered, and then the flesh started to rot. And just as quickly, the lesser Phyrexians began cutting them down where they stood.

Not even Kokuda's men escaped. His first squad tried to gallop away to safety, but half of the samurai and their stag mounts crashed to the earth as the wurm's vapors hit them. The stags rotted to bone in seconds, and the samurai wailed and choked in their armor. Melted flesh oozed from between the armor plates.

Mizuki regrouped with Azrael and Ayano. "We gotta do something!"

"Its mouth is open," Azrael told her, his fists clenched. "On three, Mizuki."

"What - oh!"

"One, two, _three_!"

Azrael threw out a punch and launched a large fireball that arced gracefully through the air. The great ball of flame landed right in the wurm's mouth, and the metallic beast choked and grunted in pain. It jerked back, its mouth charred and smoking, its plating starting to melt.

"Hell yeah!" Mizuki pointed her Fiora sword and pumped all the mana she could into the tip. A seething, oversized helix of red and white mana (and a bit of black, blue, and green, thanks to the mages' assistance) shot right into the wurm's mouth. Again, the wurm roared and drew back in agony, but Mizuki kept up the pressure, her teeth bared, her hair fluttering from the spell's ambient pressure. She felt her blade's mana wearing thin with alarming speed, but she didn't dare let up yet. That stupid wurm had killed too many people already!

Something broke in the wurm's mouth, and its noxious vapors vanished. With molten metal bleeding everywhere, the wurm kept retreating, and several lesser Phyrexians gathered around it to defend it.

"Slay them!" tai-sa Kokuda roared.

All the rest of his forest samurai charged at the Phyrexians head-on, aided by several kami-enhanced monks, kitsune blademasters, and a squad of ronin samurai clad in bulky red-green armor. Mizuki watched in awe as these assembled warriors engaged the remaining Phyrexians, trading deadly blows with frightening ferocity and speed.

The injured wurm raised its tail and slapped down, crushing a kitsune and two mercenary ronin to death. In retaliation, five of Kokuda's samurai galloped over and sliced off the last ten feet of the wurm's tail, and black oil bled from the amputated metal.

Then, the ronin raised their swords into the air. In a flash of mana, their katanas grew even larger, their steel blades now gold in color and humming with red-green mana. The ronin urged their horses onwards, and the men fearlessly hacked at the wurm's head, taking off pieces all over.

The wurm snarled and snapped out its jaws. Its teeth tore one samurai in half, and the nearby Phyrexians sliced apart another samurai just as easily. But the remaining ronin arced around the battlefield and joined Kokuda's men. The combined force assaulted the wurm's flank, and their blades tore off its armor plates one by one. Meanwhile, the kitsune blademasters and monks kept the lesser Phyrexians at bay to buy the samurai more time.

With a final roar, the wurm disintigrated into a pile of oily scrap metal. The lesser Phyrexians faltered, and were mopped up in a matter of minutes.

At last, the coalition's battalion C held the field alone.

Various officers called for casualty reports and reformed their units. It wasn't a pretty sight in Mizuki's eyes: barely a quarter of the battalion was left, and many survivors were badly injured, or their mana was totally depleted. There was only so much that the medical kitsune could do for them; many would march into battle hobble by injuries, or mana-less.

"Look at that," Mizuki commented. "Victory, even if it was hard-won. Am I right?"

Ayano nodded shakily. "I don't know if this remaining force will be enough to support battalions A and B at Minamo. But we will have to try."

"We still have hope," Azrael added. "If we won once, we can do so again. Minamo will be free."

Mizuki nodded. "I'm gonna hold you to that."

*o*o*o*o*

Mizuki admired her Fiora sword on horseback as she rode with the ragged remnants of battalion C. Its enchantment had nearly been worn out in the battle, but at Ayano's insistence, her sword's mana (and that of Azrael's bracers) had been fully recharged at the hands of a few support mages. And as a further precaution, Ayano had Higure's summoner scroll on hand and primed for use. The Kirinji scion had endured a smaller battle against the Phyrexians, but neither side would hold anything back at Minamo.

The pleasant morning sun kept tempting Mizuki to forget just what she was getting herself into.

Ayano, tai-sa Kokuda, and a few other officers led the battalion across the rolling hills, and the air grew even more damp as they pushed onwards. Finally, Mizuki heard the distant, rumbling roar of the famed waterfalls. _Here we are!_

Battalion C's warriors rode over the hilltops and began a steady trot to unite with battalions A and B, both of which were much larger than C. Mizuki felt a thrill of excitement as the massive coalition came together. Myriad samurai of many clans and ronin mercenaries, plus kitsune blademasters and mystics, archers of all races, monks, trebuchets, beast tamers, and even a few kami marched together against the Phyrexians.

The united army marched over a few more forested hills and beheld the massive Minamo waterfall and the other, lesser waterfalls.

Up ahead loomed the mammoth Minamo Academy that sat perched on the biggest waterfall, encased in protective blue bubbles of mana.

And the seemingly infinite army of blue and white Phyrexians that stood between the coalition and the besieged school.

Murmurs of anger, fear, and dismay swept through the coalition, and Mizuki felt her heart drop. Whatever the size of the coalition, there must have been _four_ Phyrexians for every warrior! And they all turned to face the coalition and began marching for a counter-attack, totally fearless and inexorable.

The coalition accelerated as its warriors raced forth to meet the tremendous Phyrexian army. Near the coalition's middle, Mizuki rode with Azrael and Ayano on either side, and she felt like a leaf being tossed into a storm. _Like Morrel used to say... angels watch over us!_

Especially since the rocky ground began to shudder and shake, and then _several_ metallic wurms emerged, all roaring in the open air. Three, four, five, six...

One had been a serious problem. But this?

Mizuki felt faint. _Dammit... how are we supposed to do this?!_

She steeled herself. _Keep going and find out._

*o*o*o*o*

Radiah Albazan stood atop one wurmcoil siege engine's head as the two hundred-foot-long beast fully emerged and reared its head like a spiny steel cobra. Her pale blonde hair fluttered in the damp wind, her bony porcelain staff held in her gloved right hand. Her black leather armor insulated her from the chilly, damp air of the waterfalls. She smiled broadly.

 _As I thought! The defenders of Kamigawa saved me the trouble of hunting them down. That's right, people, try and take your school back. Now I've got you all in one place._

She watched as her army launched its opening assault. Phyrexian samurai, cyborg war hounds, horrors, golems, and mechanical hulks traded blows a thousand times over as the Minamo Waterfall continued to thunder on and spray water over the battlefield.

Tidy solutions were always Radiah's favorite.


	20. Chapter 20

**FALL SEVEN TIMES**

 **by Ulquiorra9000**

 **Chapter 20**

Mizuki kept up a good sprint on her war horse with Azrael and Ayano on either side of her, but she knew better than to rush too far into the Phyrexian's ranks. Instead, she stayed in Battalion C's formation and watched as the other two battalions opened fire.

Long arcs of smoke and flame formed across the damp air as Battalion B's trebuchets rolled into position and flung their incendiary payloads. Mizuki heard samurai and mercenaries cheer as the explosive rounds peppered the Phyrexians' endless formations, and the very ground shuddered from the sheer force. In sheets of flame and sparks, countless charred Phyrexians were sent flying. The remaining Phyrexians slowed their advance, scrambling to reform their ranks.

"Watch Battalion A go forth," Ayano shouted over the din. "They will drive our enemies right back and create flanking opportunities for Battalions B and C."

Mizuki watched, and sure enough, whole companies of samurai, ronin, monks, mages, and war tigers crashed into the Phyrexians' scattered ranks. Katanas clashed loudly a thousand times over, echoing in the damp air. Black oil sprayed everywhere as Phyrexian cyborgs, chrome hounds, golems, and battle priests fell under the onslaught.

Not long after that, Battalion B, as Ayano had promised, charged at the Phyrexians' open flanks. Scores of oily cyborgs and artifact horrors fell, and the process only sped up as more trebuchet rounds blasted apart squads of Phyrexian warriors. Colorful battle mage spells flew every which way, creating a gisly light show through the haze of smoke, blood and oil.

Mizuki felt herself grinning. _This is incredible! We've got forward momentum!_

"I'm bringing in Higure now," Ayano declared. She drew the summoning scroll and activated its enchantment.

"No mercy, I see," Azrael commented. "Good."

Mizuki was in awe as Higure appeared out of thin air, landing easily in a ready pose. Without a word, the master ninja sprinted forth, keeping pace with the war horses.

Then Battalion C took its turn.

Mizuki shouted as her fellow warriors bore down on another large cluster of Phyrexians. She pointed her Fiora sword, and her hair whipped around as its intense red-white aura charged to full power. Then she got an idea. and she swept her sword in a wide arc, willing it to release its energy along that path.

A wide whip of flame, intensified with white lightning, slashed through the Phyrexians' ranks, burning away over a dozen in one sweep. Then the leftover energy scattered, taking out another handful of hostile troops.

"That was new," Azrael commented. "Good to know that you're still innovating, Mizuki."

"Try and keep up, Azrael!" Mizuki teased him.

"Then I will." Azrael leaned forward on his horse, his red hair and blue cape billowing behind him. Then he shot out his left fist.

A thick ribbon of blue-red-black mana whipped out and branched into a dozen thinner tendrils. These tendrils blasted away every Phyrexian they touched, and once a huge Phyrexian hulk advanced, the tendrils bound it by the wrists and dragged it down to earth.

Taking this chance, a dozen ronin in blue-black armor charged forth and sliced the golem apart with their enchanted katanas.

"Okay, _that_ was new, too!" Mizuki hollered.

Ayano, too, fought off every nearby foe with her blade, but it was Higure who led the way. The ninja moved faster than Mizuki's eyes could track, his body a blur of blue robes as he darted among the enemies' ranks. He set off explosive hand bombs seemingly at random, always keeping the Phyrexians off-balance. His punches, kicks, and knife attacks felled the Phyrexians even faster than they could converge on him.

"He's created a path," Ayano called out, pointing. "We can surround and eliminate that wurm siege engine without interference. Let's go!"

Mizuki saw Ayano's point. There were half a dozen such wurms on the field, and before long, they'd turn the tide and make this battle _very_ difficult! Taking a few out right now could give hope.

Led by Higure, a squad of mercenary ninjas and monks kept stray Phyrexians clear while Mizuki's trio, plus several squads of ronin and battle mages, confronted the massive metallic wurm. The great metal beast let out an angry howl as ronin blades sliced at its steel plating and mage fire roasted its metallic innards.

Then the wurm dived head-first into the ground and burrowed, faster than Mizuki thought possible. All two hundred feet of its long body sank into the hole and out of sight.

"That metal bastard!" a ronin archer shouted. "What the hell do we do now?"

"I, uh..." was all Mizuki could say before the ground rumbled in the distance. Then she yelped in horror as the same wurm blasted upwards from the ground, right in the middle of Battalion C's rear formations. Tons of dirt and rocks sprayed everywhere like a fountain, and the nearby kitsune, monks, and clerics scattered in terror.

Too late. The wurm issued a rapidly-expanding cloud of green-gray miasma that washed over the mortals' ranks. Horses and people alike withered to the bone in moments, collapsing all over the place. Scores of medics and backup mages... dead.

Ayano went pale. "No! We needed all of them... move out, people! Stop that wurm!"

"How?" another ronin snapped. "Lady Ayano, you got a plan to deal with that miasma?"

Ayano was silent.

*o*o*o*o*

Radiah could hardly believe it. So many native Kamigawa races had combined into this lovely coalition! And those trebuchets! She'd never imagine akki technology laying down fearsome cover fire while samurai, ronin, monks and more tore into her Phyrexian legions. Minions of the Machine Orthodoxy and Progress Engine found their clawed hands full of trouble.

Until it was time for phase two.

Radiah, still standing atop her wurm's head, raised her staff and shouted as she released her summoning spell.

Now for the fun part!

*o*o*o*o*

The other wurm engines advanced, and as Mizuki watched, the great beasts paved the way for a Phyrexian counter-attack that decimated the ranks of Battalions A and B. Just as many Phyrexians fell, but damn, they could afford the loss of numbers by far.

Mizuki lost count of how many golems, cyborg samurai, and war hounds she slew with her Fiora sword, and its fearsome echantment dimmed a bit every minute. She panted for breath, her face streaked with sweat and dirt as she frantically slashed at any Phyrexian that came too close to her horse. Azrael and Ayano did their best, but their fatigue was clear. Higure had to draw back just to fill the holes of their defenses; no longer could he afford to lead the charge.

"A wurm falls!" Azrael shouted at some point. "Look, over there!"

Mizuki wiped her brow with her free hand and felt a surge of hope as the stalwart warriors of Battalion A first broke up a coiled wurm engine, then slew its smaller halves. Near the wurm's remains, Phyrexians retreated, unwilling to fight without its support.

Shrieking voices filled the air.

"What are _those_?" a monk cried.

Mizuki felt cold as several angels, all of them armored in oil-streaked porcelain, swooped on the battlefield. She had seen a few angels patrolling the skies of Bant... but these would freeze Morrel's heart.

The angels swooped low on tattered, grimy wings, and they sliced into the coalition's ranks with crooked claymores. Mercenary archers loosed flights of arrows, only to miss as the angels gracefully arced upwards and out of range. Down below, the Phyrexians resumed their charge, and they, and the other wurms, kept pushing the coalition back.

"Winged warriors?" Ayano cried in disbelief.

"Angels," Azrael grated. "Winged women common to other planes, you see. But these are angels of a Phyrexian vision. We'll be lucky to escape them."

He was right: while one angel retreated as a squad of archers hit its wing with a lucky volley, the others inexorably turned the battle's tide, backed up by the wurms. The huge Minamo Academy seemed impossibly distant as Mizuki fell back with the others, determined to keep the Phyrexian hordes from slaughtering the last of their forces. Various clan banners were still held high, but they seemed more vain and desperate than proud and imposing.

"Lady Ayano! I cannot allow you to fall today," Higure told her, keeping pace with her horse. "We must leave the battlefield at once and pray that those winged warriors do not catch us."

Ayano winced. "If the leaders flee the battle, what can we possibly -"

"I am not responsible for this whole battle, my lady!" Higure shouted. "I am responsible for _you_! Daimyo Kirinji will sooner have me killed than allow you to suffer harm under my protection. We must _go_!"

Tears trickled down Ayano's cheeks. "I..."

"We've gotta do somethin'!" Mizuki shouted back, her heart tight with terror. "C'mon! You're the best ninja around! Think of something!"

"I only act for lady Ayano's protection," Higure insisted, his dark eyes like obsidian chips. "Fight and die if you wish, Mizuki, but I have my orders from Daimyo Kirinji."

Azrael stared, his lips moving soundlessly. Mizuki understood the battle in his mind: abandon the chance to slay his hated enemies to protect Ayano, or stay, and uphold the Planeswalker Code against these horrors?

Mizuki's eyes stung as she watched the battle become a slaughter. No samurai, monk, kitsune, or tiger could resist for long as the blue and white Phyrexians butchered them. The blood and oil-soaked battlefield was slick with red as the coalition's forces stumbled back.

 _We're lost!_

The Phyrexians were bound to conquer the whole plane, weren't they? It was obvious, in the face of that endless horde, the wurm engines, the twisted angels...

What was hope or courage against all this?

Mizuki bowed her head and blanked out every thought except for one: survival. Her sword felt heavy in her hands as she fended off stray Phyrexians that got too close.

Then, a great surge of blue mana in the distance filled the heavens.

Combined shouts and cries of shock and wonder filled the coalition's wary ranks. Mizuki dared a glance over her shoulder and beheld Minamo's defensive enchantments falling to the Phyrexians' onslaught. Two wurm engines, some hulks, and hundreds of cyborgs had broken away from the battle, and now, the famed Academy lay bare before them.

Minamo had fallen.

It was all over.

*o*o*o*o*

 _My word, that school had some of the finest enchantments I ever saw! I think that part of me is sad to see it end like this._

Radiah wore a wide smile as her wurm finished pounding on Minamo Academy's barriers, and the ancient enchantments fell in a fizzle of blue. Like the mist, the broken enchantments faded in the air for all time.

Then, she turned and watched the ragged coalition continue its strained retreat. Radiah shrugged, then held out her staff to carry her thoughts to every Phyrexian minion: "Let them go for now. We have what we want. They can never again pose a real threat to us."

It wasn't exactly _pity_ , but Radiah found no point in beating a broken enemy. And besides, if her warriors were lured too far from the exposed school, what if _another_ coalition force was waiting to take advantage of that? Such a ploy was unlikely, but not impossible.

Mission accomplished, at any rate.

Radiah prepared to planeswalk back to New Phyrexia to deliver the exciting news. _Then_ she'd be right back to take care of business!

*o*o*o*o*

"They... let us go. I still can't believe it," Ayano said in a hollow voice, staring into her campfire.

It was evening. Barely one-tenth of the coalition remained, camped out at the edge of a forest under the deep purple sky. The first few stars were already out, along with a moon.

Mizuki nodded silently, too shocked to speak. Around her, over a hundred tents had been set up, and campfires dotted the place with warm orange light, cooking the wild animals that the coalition's scouts had caught. Men and women spoke in low tones over the flames, their helmets held under their arms, their eyes haunted. All the while, a handful of samurai patrolled the perimeter on horseback, still carrying their clans' banners. Out of pride, maybe, or denial.

Azrael finished a strip of beef jerky. "The Phyrexians are patient. They got what they came for; their objective was merely to prevent us from breaking the siege on Minamo Academy."

Ayano shook her head. "I'm astounded that they didn't exterminate every one of us."

"The Phyrexians know that time is on their side," Azrael explained. "Their numbers grow by the day as their oil-spreading machines soak the earth and rivers with their contagion. Their confidence is well-earned."

Ayano sighed, hands clasped in her lap. "I fear for my father. His estate won't last long under Phyrexian dominance on utsushiyo."

Mizuki didn't say a word. She'd heard confirmations that the Phyrexians couldn't invade kakuriyo, the kami half of the plane. But Minamo Academy was a well-known bridge between the worlds. No doubt that the Phyrexians had plans for the kami. But what? The oil had proven incapable of infecting the kami; not one kami had been sighted among the Phyrexians' ranks.

Just another mystery in this hopeless mess!

"This camp is secure, right?" Mizuki finally said.

Ayano nodded. "As secure as we can make it. We will at least have warning if any Phyrexians come after us."

Mizuki stood. "I'm goin' to bed early, if no one minds."

Azrael shrugged. "I have no objections. You fought well, Mizuki. Have some rest."

"I'm... gonna figure something out," Mizuki said vaguely, heading back to her tent. She lifted the flap. "I'll be back soon, okay?"

Ayano merely raised her eyebrows, but Azrael had a knowing look on his face. _Good luck_ , he mouthed. He gave an approving nod.

Mizuki lowered her gaze as she slipped into her rent and activated her black-green mana aura, her backpack heavy with supplies on her back.

She took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. "See you guys soon," she muttered.

Then she activated her planeswalker gate in the privacy of the tent's canvas walls.

She stepped through.


	21. Chapter 21

**FALL SEVEN TIMES**

 **by Ulquiorra9000**

 **Chapter 21**

Radiah had barely returned from New Phyrexia when she stomped right through Minamo Academy's front doors, up a few flights of stairs, and kicked open the wooden door to the headmaster's office.

"Okay, we have a little business to take care of," Radiah said briskly, shutting the door behind her. "First of all, what's your name?"

The old man behind the desk sat calmly, swathed in blue and gold robes, his hands folded together on the desk. His eyes were unreadable. "I am Hisoka, grand Sensei of this school. And, it would seem, the last in a long line of many."

"Oh, right. I see 'em," Radiah said, glancing at the inkbrush paintings of past Senseis on the wall. She stepped closer, her high-heeled boots loud on the wooden plank floor. She smiled. "I'm Radiah Albazan, a high priestess of the Machine Orthodoxy."

Hisoka nodded. "So, that is the faction that has claimed my school and posted metal guards everywhere?"

Already, numerous golems and _compleat_ samurai had replaced the school's guard force, and the golems had already swapped out the entrance hall's banners for tall white banners bearing the Phyrexian emblem in black. The change had taken only an hour.

Radiah nodded. "That's correct, though the Progress Engine masterminded the invasion plan to begin with. Credit goes where it's due."

Hisoka didn't move as Radiah towered over him. "I see, then. What is it you want with Minamo?"

"Access to kakuriyo, _that's_ what." Radiah tapped a gloved finger on the desk for emphasis. "Where the kami dwell. You're gonna help me open a link to kakuriyo, old man."

"To what end?"

Radiah glanced out the window at the waterfalls. "New Phyrexia's future. Let's put it that way."

Hisoka noddeed once. "I admire progress, yes. But not like this. I will not open a link to kakuriyo, regardless of what you do to me. Interrogation, torture, threats of death... I will not yield."

Radiah stared. Hisoka's tone was still calm, even polite, but she sensed the iron will of his words. Was he afraid of nothing? Had she underestimated the defenders of Kamigawa?

Better try plan B.

"There's all kinds of arcane knowledge in that head of yours," Radiah said, and she extended her right hand. Her bony, porcelain staff materialized in her grip, and the glass orb at the end glowed with purple lighting inside. "I'll have to settle this the blunt way."

Hisoka didn't move.

Radiah almost regretted pressing her staff's orb to Hisoka Sensei's forehead and converting him to the _compleat_. His mind and will were fascinating! Such a rare specimen! But she had a job to do, after all.

Hisoka stood, his eyes glazed over. "What is it you need, mistress?" he said, his voice now a low, gravely sound.

Radiah twirled her staff in one hand. "Let's get that link set up. Then my men can install the Channeler."

*o*o*o*o*

Afternoon sunlight glinted in Mizuki's eyes as she stepped onto the familiar, grassy front ground of Akrasa Castle on Bant. She shielded her eyes and winced until one of several large, fluffy clouds passed over it and the light dimmed.

She also recognized the sweet scent on the breeze, that of polished armor, fruit orchards, and pollen.

At that moment, three lion-mounted knights surrounded her.

"Don't you dare move!" one knight shouted, once he lifted his visor. He had a shiny tower shield in one hand and a halberd in the other. His armored lion mount huffed and licked its lips.

Mizuki threw up her hands automatically. "Hey! What are you doing?"

"What are _you_ doing here, intruder?" another knight demanded. "You thought you could infiltrate our borders, huh? Nice try."

"I'm not sneaking anywhere!" Mizuki snapped, her heart racing in her chest. But she felt panic tighten her throat.

"Take her to the dungeons. Then we'll make her talk," the first knight said.

"Stop!" another, familiar voice cried.

The knights backed up a step as a blonde battlemage with wire-frame glasses hurried over, his white coat billowing behind him. "What's your problem, battlemage?" a knight demanded. "We found this intruder -"

"She's not an intruder," Morrel told him, pointing at Mizuki. "She's a friend. From far away. I trust her."

"It could be a trick," the third knight said shortly.

Morrel looked Mizuki right in the eyes. "Where did Veldor graduate?"

Mizuki swallowed. "Cae'Xan University. On Esper."

"That doesn't prove -" a knight started.

Morrel held up a hand to silence the knight. "Mizuki, which clan aided us on Tarkir while searching for a Sphaera Vitae shard?"

Mizuki took a second to remember. "The Temur."

"And whose castle did we raid on Innistrad?"

"Ludevic's."

Morrel looked up at the mounted knights. "It's her. I'm certain. There's no danger."

The lead knight returned Morrel's glare, then made an impatient noise and gestured to his men. "Back to the patrol," he told them gruffly. "C'mon." The knights marched off.

Mizuki put a hand over her heart, willing it to slow down. "Th-that was some welcome," she said shakily.

Morrel approached her, a weary grin on his face. "Border security is even tighter nowadays, due to the conflux war. It's been one disaster after another lately -"

Mizuki took hold of Morrel's head and enveloped him in a deep, longing kiss. She broke from him. "I missed you," she breathed.

"I..." Morrel shook his head and smiled. "I had no idea you'd be here. It was just another day of patrols and chasing off Jund raiding parties -"

"Miss me?"

Morrel gently lifted Mizuki's chin with one hand and kised her back. "I did."

Mizuki ran a finger over her lips, savoring the aftertaste. "I... I had to see you, Morrel. I didn't know what else to do."

Morrel gently put his hands on Mizuki's shoulders. "You look exhausted. Come with me to the castle, and I'll have a hot bath and a meal ready for you. Then we can talk."

Vividly, Mizuki remembered the last time Morrel had offered to take her back to Akrasa Castle. She looked forward to it much more this time.

*o*o*o*o*

"... and once the Phyrexian angels showed up, we were routed," Mizuki said, three hours later, nearly finished with her long tale. She and Morrel sat atop a hill under an apple tree, overlooking a neatly-tended fruit orchard while armored aven soldiers drifted on the breeze.

Mizuki, still fresh from her bath and her belly full, sat with her knees tucked under her chin, her toes digging into the grass. She stared at the ground. "It was chaos. I was lucky to get out of there. It was all that Azrael and Ayano could do to survive, too. Now we're all set up at a camp, but... what good does it do? The Phyrexians have won, haven't they? My... my _home_ is lost."

She felt bitter tears, which she'd held back since the battle, sting her eyes. "I can't believe it."

Morrel, who sat cross-legged next to her, shifted slightly. "A compact fighting force can make a big difference once the enemy spreads out to secure its territory," he said. "The Jund and Grixis invaders have done much the same. Your coalition could..."

His voice trailed off and he made an embarassed chuckle. "I'm sorry. I've joined the king's war council, and I always end up thinking like that."

Mizuki swallowed in a tight throat. "Congrats." She managed a watery smile.

Morrel gently took Mizuki's left hand in both of his and squeezed. "I'm sorry. You didn't come here for tactical advice, did you? I'm sure that your coalition leaders can handle that."

Mizuki nodded shakily. She felt her cheeks dampen.

"You lost your home, Mizuki. I realize that. I can't imagine fully what that feels like," Morrel said gently. "It... sucks, doesn't it?"

Mizuki laughed feebly. "I-it does, yeah. And it all happened so fast. Last month, everything was normal and _right_." She felt herself relax in Morrel's company. and she felt a rush of gratitude. How had she gone three months without him by her side?

Morrel simply held Mizuki's hand in both of his, and he fell silent for a short time. Mizuki couldn't imagine what was going through his head as he stared down at the orchard, until he spoke up.

"Akrasa Kingdom is the last on Bant."

Mizuki started. "Huh?"

"Even with some support from sympathetic elf tribes from Naya and some aid from Esper, the other kingdoms have all fallen," Morrel said frankly. "Eos, Valeron, Jhess... all gone. You can't see them from here, but Akrasa Kingdom has many refugee camps across its grounds. Countless tents in each, and frightened faces. I visited them during my battles at the border. So many Bantians in one place."

Mizuki felt herself go cold. "I-I had no idea."

"It's an Alara affair," Morrel said with a shrug. "I can't expect you or Zoira to be everywhere at once. That's not fair to you."

"Hey, I would have helped at least a little if I knew," Mizuki said doggedly. "Planeswalker Code, and all that. And I've fought Jund warriors before. I can handle 'em."

Morrel laughed. "Oh, I remember that too." His face settled. "Whatever I make it sound like, though, this is _not_ the end of Akrasa. We have a saying: 'if you are struck down, then you shall rise once again'. A lesson on endurance and perseverance, if your heart is true."

Mizuki blinked. "Oh, yeah? We've got a folk saying kind of like that on Kamigawa."

"Oh?" Morrel smiled.

"Yeah." Mizuki gently withdrew her hand from Morrel's hands, wiped her cheeks dry, and wrapped her arms around her legs. "It goes: 'fall seven times, stand up eight'. I think it means the same thing as your quote. I heard it a few times growing up."

"Fall seven times, stand up eight," Morrel muttered to himself. "Very wise."

Mizuki gave her boyfriend a funny look. "Are you gonna tell me that this applies to the coalition? That we've gotta keep fighting like nothing haappened?"

The lenses of Morrel's glasses glinted in the sun. "I believe that it would be better if you told _yourself_ that."

Mizuki's breath caught in her throat. Then she grinned. "Hell, you Bant people always have an oh-so-lofty reponse to everything. I should've guessed!"

Morrel's smile came right back. "It comes with having rhox monk friends. And having a stern mentor standing over you as you pore over scrolls in your study sessions."

Mizuki laughed. "I'm not so jealous of that last part!"

Then she lay on her back, hands tucked behind her head. She watched as Morrel joined her, nestled close to her. "Can we, uh.. stay here for a while?"

"As long as you like," Morrel said, looking up at the ripe red apples overhead.

Mizuki's brain was churning with anxious thoughts: of the Phyrexians, the fate of the coalition and the Kirinji clan, Minamo Academy, and now Akrasa Kingdom. She pushed them all away. "It's not easy, y'know, having a boyfriend on another plane," she admitted.

"Indeed. When some of my older friends ask me if I have a lady, it's hard to explain that you're a planeswalker," Morrel added lightly.

Mizuki smiled. "Hey, you're not giving away all my secrets, are you?"

"No, I assure you."

Mizuki sighed. "This is... really nice. We don't get enough 'us' time. Especially when we've got battles to fight."

Morrel glanced over at her. "What do you have in mind?"

"I bet there's some things I don't know about you. Or that you don't know 'bout me."

"Really."

"I always thought my life would be boring, y'know," Mizuki admitted. "Up until Haijin-no-Imari's attack, I'd never seen a monster, or a legion of samurai, or anything beyond the Jukai Forest or the town Juka-no-Nadachi. My mom was an amateur jeweler, and my dad was a part-time fur trapper."

Morrel nodded.

"I remember him heading off into the forest with his trapper buddies, always with a gourd of sake," Mizuki recalled fondly. "He'd wave over his shoulder at my sister Hana and me, and promise to buy something nice for us and our mom if he caught something good.

"Usually, he didn't get much. But one time, he caught an ermine with the softest white fur with tiny black streaks, and he made me a winter hat out of it. I bet he could have sold it for a lot at Juka-no-Nadachi. But he wanted it for me."

"That's very kind."

"And my mom gave Hana a little silver necklace with a tiny amethyst in it, no bigger than my pinkie nail. See?" She held out a hand and wiggled her pinkie. "Tiny, but Hana loved it. I remember she was hoppin' up and down when my mom gave it to her for her twelfth birthday. My mom had clever fingers, to carve it into shape like that."

Morrel nodded again. "Isn't that what you're fighting for? To keep the Kamigawa where your parents loved you and your sister?"

Mizuki blinked. "Well, if you put it that way..."

"I have every bit of faith in you, Mizuki. That you won't let Kamigawa fall," Morrel said earnestly. "Especially with that Daimyo Kirinji fellow you told me about, and his daughter, and Azrael."

"Not Zoira, though," Mizuki said grimly. "She's still busy on her home plane, fightin' other monsters."

"Whatever happens, you have people who won't let you succumb," Morrel told her. "Remember that, because they remember _you_." He grinned. "That's another Bant piece of wisdom: honor and trust someone, and they will do the same unto you."

Mizuki felt herself smile again, and her face warmed. "Good point. And that means you too, right?"

Morrel went pink. "Of course! If I could planeswalk as well, I'd be right there on Kamigawa with you."

"What about Bant?"

"I could... split my time in that scenario," Morrel said slowly. "Why not?"

Mizuki laughed. "You never change."

"I..."

"I meant it in a good way." Mizuki reached over and poked Morrel's shoulder. "I can't stay away from Kamigawa for long, and I've gotta find a way to fight the Phyrexians. But I _had_ to see you first. Good old _you_."

"I'll always be here," Morrel said fondly. "I may have said it already, but... I couldn't stop thinking about you while you were away, Mizuki. I couldn't fully go back to my old life, not when I had _you_ on my mind. And now, to have you with me... it's -"

"Shut your yapper, will you?" Mizuki got up and knelt by her boyfriend, taking his head in her hands again. "You sure talk a lot."

"You already knew that."

Mizuki laughed. "I was right. You _don't_ change." She lowered herself and kissed him again, long and deep. She felt her heart hammering, her skin tingling. She parted from again, panting. "Hey... you know that I love you, right?"

Morrel's eyes widened. "I... I don't believe you told me that before."

Mizuki gasped. " _What_? After all we've been through together, I didn't?"

"Everything went by so fast during our Sphaera Vitae mission," Morrel pointed out. "I could barely keep up with you or Veldor!"

"Well, I'm gonna tell it like it is." Mizuki brushed aside her bangs and held a hand to her heart. "Morrel, I love you, and ain't nothin' gonna keep me away from you."

Morrel beamed. "Mizuki, I love you, and I swear I shall -"

Mizuki shut him up with another smooth. "Sorry, what was that last part?"

"I-I swear I shall never let anything come between us. Our souls are one."

"More Bant wisdom?"

"No, that's me speaking from the heart. Promise."

Mizuki shook her head. "You're such a cornball, Morrel. But damn if I don't still love ya for it."

They didn't return to Akrasa Castle's torch-lit, banner-decorated halls until the sun had already set.


	22. Chapter 22

**FALL SEVEN TIMES**

 **by Ulquiorra9000**

 **Chapter 22**

"Mizuki! Please get up, darling. Are you going to lay in bed all day?"

Mizuki blinked her eyes open and sat up in her bed in her family's small cabin. Through the window, she saw the morning-lit trees of the Jukai Forest, and her fellow villagers going about their morning chores. Birds sang and a breeze rustled the tree leaves.

Mizuki's mother, Tomiko, stood in the doorway, an exasperated smile on her face. "Mizuki, your sister is already working in the garden. Don't make her work all alone."

"Sorry, mom." Mizuki groaned and slid out of bed. "See? Already up."

"Your breakfast is already ready. Get a move on, will you?" Tomiko's smile widened as she left and shut the bedroom door behind her.

Mizuki quietly changed into her everyday yukata, a garment of dark green fabric common to this area with a red sash. Why had she been dreaming of a faraway castle? Strange!

After wolfing down the promised breakfast, Mizuki stepped outside and ran right into her father, Keito. "Sorry, dad."

"My mistake. Should have looked where I'm going," Keito said with a quick laugh. He already had his trapper equipment slung over his broad shoulder. He looked down at his daughter. "What's wrong? You're pale, Mizuki."

"Is Mizuki finally up? About time," came a girl's voice, and Hana rounded the corner of the house, an impatient look on her face. "Come on! You're so slow sometimes!"

Mizuki stuck her tongue out at Hana. "Good luck out there, dad," she told Keito. "Gonna have a good time?"

Keito nodded. "I've got a good feeling about today." He set off. "I love you girls very much."

Hana waved. "I love you, dad!"

Mizuki waved too, watching Keito tromp down the village's central dirt road.

The sun went dark.

"Mizuki!" Hana yelped in terror. She hopped back, and her feet splashed in black oil that seeped out of the ground.

Now everyone in the village cried out in horror, the ground buckling as more oil bled out. Then dark shapes emerged from the soil, long blades of chrome and steel that flexed like fingers.

Fresh blood mingled with the pooling oil as blades eviscerated the townsfolk, and Mizuki could only stare in numb shock as the bodies fell. She barely managed to turn her head, and she saw Hana's bloody form splash face-down into the rising oil tide.

Now, long, skeletal hands reached up and dragged Mizuki down, the metallic fingers clamping shut over her mouth, scrabbling at her throat -

 _"Mizuki!"_

The bed felt hard. Or rather, the floor did, and Mizuki realized that she had fallen out of the bed she and Morrel had shared that night. She shivered on the wood-paneled floor, her hair damp with sweat, her chest rapidly rising and falling. Moonlight glowed through the room's narrow window.

Mizuki realized that it was Morrel who had called her name that last time. Morrel now knelt by her, gently taking hold of her shoulders.

"I-I'm fine," Mizuki panted, her body still quivering. She gulped; it still felt like Phyrexian hands were seizing her throat.

"You screamed and fell out of bed," Morrel told her, helping her sit up. In the moonlight, concern filled his eyes. "It was so sudden."

"I..." Mizuki sighed. "I've had a few nightmares. Ever since the Phyrexians showed up. I-I remember another one... I was trying to find you in a fog. You weren't there."

Morrel only stared, apparently lost for words.

Mizuki got to her feet and looked out the window. Beyond her lay not the Jukai Forest, but the rolling hills of Bant, dotted by fruit tree orchards, rhox monk huts, and ponds covered in lily pads. Stars shone in the sky, and in their light, a few aven swooped along on patrol.

 _Home is far away._

"Do you want any water?" Morrel asked gently.

Mizuki nodded.

She gulped down the offered water and kept staring out the window, as though expecting the Phyrexians to suddenly emerge here as well. "I dreamed of home."

Morrel joined her by the window and tenderly wrapped his arms around her. "You miss it?"

"I miss what it _was_." Mizuki made another shaky sigh. "I saw my mom and dad, and my little sister Hana. It felt so real, and so normal! I talked to them. Then... the Phyrexians were there. They k-killed everyone, and then they came for me."

Morrel gave her a squeeze. "You've been through horrible things," he said, nuzzling her shoulder. "A mind can only bear so much strain without consequence."

Mizuki licked her lips. "I can't even imagine how Ayano and her father feel. Saving Kamigawa is their mission, and they're in charge of the coalition. If we fail, imagine how -"

"They'll find a way. And so can you," Morrel urged her gently. "But not right now. Breathe. No one can hurt you here."

Mizuki took a few deep breaths, and she felt her racing heart slow down. "I don't know what to do," she breathed. "I don't think anyone can stop the Phyrexians."

"Hey." Morrel let Mizuki go, turned her around, and cupped her head in his hands. "You're a fighter. We defeated Nihil and stopped Azrael's Sphaera Vitae from damaging the Multiverse. Give yourself a break. A solution will come. I'm certain."

Mizuki made a watery smile. "Tell that to the coalition soldiers. Morale's pretty low."

Morrel lowered his hands. "Yeah. I... know what that's like."

There was something in his tone...

Mizuki nervously clasped her hands at her navel. "Um... should I ask...?"

Morrel looked out the window. "Do you remember me telling you about Rafael, my big brother?"

"Maybe once."

"He's a battlemage like me. He and his squadmates were captured by Grixis raiders two weeks ago." Morrel clenched his fists on the windowsill. "Tortured, interrogated, their life essence sapped away, most likely. Only Rafael got away from them, but it was too late. Their dark magic had broken his mind. He's not himself anymore. He... doesn't even remember me."

Mizuki gasped and clapped her hands over her mouth. "Oh no! I - I'm sorry."

"He's in the medical ward," Morrel explained quietly. "I visit him every day. He calls me 'kid' and wonders why we look similar. I play along, and keep his spirits up. He's in a gardening class with other patients to keep him busy. He... has no chances of returning to active duty."

Morrel turned back to face Mizuki with an embarassed smile. "Sorry, Mizuki. That probably didn't cheer you up very much..."

Mizuki took Morrel's hand in both of hers. "You can tell me anything," she told him. "I'm sorry to hear about your brother. I guess we both know how much it hurts, fighting enemies like these."

Morrel nodded. "We all know the risks."

"But you keep on fighting, don't you?"

"I do." Morrel's eyes were steely. "I can't abandon hope and let Akrasa Kingdom fall. Nor will the other mages or knights."

Mizuki managed a watery smile. "Then I ain't gonna feel sorry for myself, either. I lost my little sister and parents when Haijin-no-Imari attacked. We lost Veldor fighting Nihil. But here we are, still goin' at it. The Planeswalker Code has gotta be upheld."

"I still uphold it, too. Even if I can't leave new Alara. I won't forget everything Veldor told us about the responsibility."

"Me, neither. His voice is pretty hard to forget."

Morrel chuckled. "I know."

Mizuki exhaled slowly. "I..."

"Yes?"  
"I gotta be honest: I wasn't sure what I was gonna do here when I showed up. I... just had to see you. I hoped that I'd figure something out."

"There's still time."

"Yeah, but still..."

"Look: why don't we have a sparring match in the morning? It may clear your mind." Morrel smiled. "I know how much you enjoy a good workout. You're not one to back down from a challenge, are you?"

Mizuki beamed. "No, I'm not." She felt a rush of gratitude. "You know just how to cheer me up, don't you?"

Morrel leaned close and tenderly kissed her on the lips. "I always do."

Mizuki made an embarassed chuckle and felt her face warm. "I think you finally got me all figured out."

Not completely. But close enough.

Mizuki watched the peaceful castle grounds for another few minutes before she climbed back into the wide bed with Morrel, and once Morrel rolled onto his side, Mizuki pressed herself to his back. She savored his warmth.

This time, she found sleep much faster.

*o*o*o*o*

It felt good to blow off some steam in a dueling ring on the castle grounds the next morning.

Assembled rhoxes, knights, squires, and aven soldiers watched as Mizuki stepped into the fifteen-foot-wide stone arena barefoot, her Fiora sword absent. Across from her, Morrel stepped into the ring, fully garbed in his trousers and boots, dark green vest, blue button-up shirt, and white cloak. He ran a hand through his blond hair.

"I hope you're not rusty, Mizuki," he said kindly. "Everyone has been kept in tip-top shape to keep the castle safe. And that includes me."

Mizuki lightly hopped back and forth on her feet to warm up. She smiled. "Who d'you think you're talkin' to? I can run in circles around you!"

Some of the squires chuckled. "Outlander girl has some guts," one of them muttered.

Morrel did a few stretches. "Unarmed combat is a deeply-entrenched skill among Bantians, you know. And I've only gotten better since we completed our quest together."

"Let's see some action!" another squire called out, and everyone loudly agreed.

Mizuki raised her fists and crouched slightly. "Come get me!"

On a cushion of blue-green mana, Morrel flashed across the stone arena, his open palm already striking through the air.

Mizuki's eyes widened. _Whoa!_

She twisted out of the way and backwards, but still, the heel of Morrel's palm grazed her cheek, and she was sent sprawling from the glancing blow. Her jaw stung as she rolled back upright.

"Hey, I'm just warming up," Morrel teased her. "Don't tell me you're already on the defensive?"

Mizuki huffed. "You got lucky."

 _When did he learn to move like that?!_

Again, Morrel charged, quick as lightning, and this time, he feinted with another palm strike and struck Mizuki's chest with a rising knee. Mizuki's breath exploded out her mouth as the mana-enhanced blow sent her stumbling back. She yelped as she nearly stepped out of the arena, then caught herself at the last second.

The squires cheered Morrel on, and the rhoxes watched Mizuki with disappointment in their dark eyes. Mizuki growled and pushed her green-black mana aura to its fullest extent. She couldn't afford to hold back.

Morrel slowly walked in a semi-arc, arms poised. "You'll have to hit back sooner or later," he told her. "I know you can do it!"

"You're tellin' _me_." Mizuki breathed deep, crouched, then darted forth.

This time, Mizuki was the one feinting. She got close enough to bait out a jab aimed at her face, and she shifted all her weight on her left foot. Quick as a cat, she ducked and allowed Morrel's fist to shoot through empty air. Then, she swept out her leg to take out Morrel's knee from under him.

Already, however, Morrel was moving again, and he simply jumped, tucking his legs under him to evade Mizuki's blow. Then a kick from mid-air hit Mizuki's right shoulder dead-on, and she felt her balance falter.

Morrel landed and swung a hard hook to her temple. Mizuki saw the blow coming as though in slow motion, her heart beating hard, her body aching. _I can't... let that connect!_

She didn't.

Mizuki seized Morrel's forearm and wrenched his hard punch aside, then yanked him toward her. She saw the look of shock on his face for just a half-second before she smashed her forehead against his. Her skull ached from the contact, but as she had hoped, it stunned Morrel for a few precious seconds.

This time, Mizuki's knee strike connected, and she saw Morrel stumble. Another kick, this one from her right foot, slammed into his stomach and sent him flat onto his back.

The squires made a collective "oooooh!" as their native champion struggled to his feet.

"That was a good one," Morrel huffed. "Unconventional, but that's what makes it effective."

Mizuki grinned. "I'm not bound by a strict set of combat rules."

The knights booed that comment, but Mizuki didn't care.

Once again, Morrel darted toward her on a cushion of blue-green mana, and Mizuki vaulted into the air to evade his kicking attack. She landed on his right flank and threw a high kick at her opponent's shoulder, but too late: Morrel ducked deep, then jabbed at her throat.

Mizuki was already moving, and she retaliated with a few quick jabs that Morrel blocked or pushed aside. "You're getting faster!" Morrel noted. "Good!"

Over and over, they blocked, punched, dodged, or countered, each trying to find a key opening in the other's defenses, to land the knockout blow. Mizuki felt her sleeveless button-up shirt cling wetly to her skin, felt her breaths come in ragged gasps. Her muscles burned as she pushed herself to keep up with Morrel's whirlwind of well-trained martial forms.

Finally, as the crowd watched breathlessly, Mizuki knocked aside one of Morrel's punches and connected a heavy uppercut on his jaw. At the same time, Morrel's other fist rammed into her sternum, and Mizuki felt herself get thrown away and flat onto her back. Morrel similarly collapsed on the arena's other end, sprawling awkwardly.

Mizuki clamored to her hands and knees, body trembling, sweat dripping from her face. "I-I can keep fighting!" she panted, but her exhaustion said otherwise.

Then, from across the arena, Morrel shakily sat up. "I've had enough," he wheezed. "D-draw?"

Mizuki made a watery smile. "Draw."

*o*o*o*o*

After a much-desired cold drink of local fruit juice and toweling herself dry in her guest room, Mizuki headed right down the hall and knocked on Morrel's door.

The door creaked open and Morrel let her inside. "Whew. What a match," he commented with a wide grin. "You really know how to push me."

"It's what I do," Mizuki teased him. "I can go again anytime you like."

Morrel chuckled. "Oh, I'm sure."

Mizuki saw Morrel's white cloak on a peg on the wall. "Not on duty yet?"

"No, not until this afternoon's patrol," Morrel explained. "I -"

A small brass medallion on his belt flickered with a white light.

"What was that?" Mizuki asked.

"Another intruder has been captured," Morrel said slowly. "Just like yesterday, when you arrived here."

Mizuki's eyes widened. "Which way to the holding cells?"

Morrel squared his shoulders. "Follow me."

Five minutes later, Morrel brought Mizuki to holding cell D-4, where two guards held a red-haired man at swordpoint.

"He's not dangerous," Morrel told the two guards.

"Another friend of yours?" a knight demanded.

"I've met skilled agents on my travels at the borders," Morrel explained. "Let me talk to him in private, okay?"

The knights reluctantly lowered their weapons and marched off into the hallway and out of earshot.

Mizuki stared. "Azrael?"

The red-headed man nodded. "Security here is impressive, Mizuki. Did you receive the same welcome?"

"Yeah, I did."

"Azrael..." Morrel breathed, staring. "I didn't think I'd see you again!"

Azrael lifted his chin. "Good day, Morrel. I presume Mizuki spent the night here?"

"Sure I did," Mizuki said defensively.

"I found your planeswalking trail leading here this morning, Mizuki," Azrael explained. "I understand if you wanted to visit Morrel for moral support and guidance."

"Mizuki told me about Kamigawa," Morrel said heavily. "I can hardly believe it. Nihil's masters still trouble us, then?"

Azrael pursed his lips. "Nihil was only the first of our many foes. A new planeswalker agent of the Phyrexians found Kamigawa and must have organized the assault. As to why they invaded _that_ plane, I'm not yet sure..."

Mizuki grunted. "I sense a 'but' in your tone."

"But," Azrael said gravely, "I may have a lead. Mizuki, we must leave at once. Morrel, I thank you for lifting Mizuki's spirits; I can sense it in her aura."

"She's my close friend. One in need," Morrel said fondly. "She would do the same for me."

Azrael nodded. "Of course. Now, Mizuki... prepare to planeswalk with me. And keep your guard up; where we're going, we'll need it." He activated a blue-black planeswalking gate next to him.

Mizuki swallowed. "O-okay." She wrapped Morrel in a tight hug, standing on her tip-toes so she could rest her chin on Morrel's shoulder. "Wish me luck," she breathed into his ear. Her eyes stung. "I get the feeling that things are gonna get worse."

She smiled weakly as Morrel hugged her back. "Angels watch over you," Morrel told her gently.

Mizuki nodded, unwilling to let her boyfriend go. Why couldn't she just stay on this sun-warmed world with Morrel's arms around her, where no Phyrexians could find them?

The Planeswalker Code. She'd be damned if she turned her back on it now.

Mizuki reluctantly let Morrel go. "I'm gonna come back here before you know it," she said, "and tell ya all about my adventures, okay? _I'm coming back_."

Morrel brought his hands together as though praying. "Be safe."

Mizuki summoned her planeswalking gate, and stepped toward it. She glanced at Morrel over her shoulder. "I love you, Morrel," she blurted out.

"I love you, Mizuki." Morrel kept his hands together in the traveler's blessing, but his face went pink.

Mizuki stepped into her gate

Seconds later, Azrael joined her in the Blind Eternities. "Are you ready?" he asked her. Around them, raw, primal creation swirled around them in dazzling colors. Under them lay the reunited Alara, the five shards crudely jammed together into a single plane. Bant looked much brighter than the other four, but darkness crept into its borders.

Mizuki nodded. "S-sure." She followed Azrael through the Blind Eternities, his blue cape and red hair fluttering behind him. Mizuki had all her gear: her backpack with its emergency supplies and her Fiora sword, and her fully-recharged mana deep in her body.

Fear of what lay ahead filled her as she marched along the Eternities. But she also remembered what Morrel had told her about his brother Rafael, and she swore to keep fighting so good people like them wouldn't suffer anymore. Morrel and his brother risked everything for Bant. Mizuki would do the same for her home, and no number of oily Phyrexians would crush her spirits again!

She balled her hands into fists.

"This is it." Azrael stood at the edge of a new plane, looking down at it.

Mizuki stood beside him. And let out a gasp.


	23. Chapter 23

**FALL SEVEN TIMES**

 **by Ulquiorra9000**

 **Chapter 23**

Mizuki clapped her hands over her mouth. "What the... I know this place. Isn't this supposed to be Mirrodin?"

Azrael glanced around. "You must recognize this plane based on the arrangement of nearby worlds. Right?"

"Y-yeah. But..." Mizuki slowly lowered her hands, her breaths coming in gasps. "We're supposed to go down _there_?"

Under her feet, the plane's gray, sickly clouds churned and writhed, punctuated by streaks of purple lightning. In the clear patches of sky, Mizuki saw a mottled, metallic surface that ran thick with black Phyrexian oil. Crooked spires, mesas, dunes, and valleys interrupted the smooth, flat plains.

"This," Azrael said grimly, "is New Phyrexia."

Mizuki glanced back at him. "New?"

"I never saw the original Phyrexian homeworld," Azrael admitted. "It fell before my time. But I've heard stories... a group of very potent planeswalkers destroyed it and slew the Father of Machines, Yawgmoth. His tomb is on Dominaria. I've visited it a few times during field trips at my university."

"Okay, but..." Mizuki worked her jaw. "You'd better have a plan, Azrael, if we're gonna put ourselves right in the middle of all that!"

"This is a world run by machines and artifice," Azrael said, a grin spreading across his face. "And I am an _artificer_ , Mizuki. haven't had much chance to prove it on Kamigawa, but here, I believe that I can find something to protect us from the Phyrexians back on your world."

Mizuki swallowed. "Something like what?"

"I'll find out when we make landfall. Now, then..." He took a step toward New Phyrexia's tortured sky.

Mizuki clamped a hand on Azrael's wrist. "Hang on."

Azrael halted. "Yes?"

"Just..." How could Mizuki voice the terror, the dread, the shock that swirled in her mind? She opened her mouth, then closed it again. "Uh... good luck."

"And to you, Mizuki."

Azrael eased himself through a planeswalker gate and toward New Phyrexia's surface. Mizuki followed him in an adjacent gate.

The bitter tang of oil and rust jammed itself right up Mizuki's nose when she stepped out of the gate.

 _"Whoa."_ Mizuki stared in awe as her planeswalker gate faded behind her. She stood on the edge of a plain composed of hexagonal chrome plates, interrupted by patches of dry, stiff grass and loose rocks. In the near distance, she heard an ocean lapping on a shore, and jagged, metallic hills filled the horizon. Even more impressive were the crooked metal towers that rose at random along the horizon, each humming with blue mana. Chrome thopters glided to and from nesting sites on the spires' upper levels, and odd, bat-like birds flew in formation to the west.

Azrael took up a position by Mizuki. He shielded his eyes from the five suns that struggled to shine from behind a thick, gray cloud. "This is the blue-dominated region of New Phyrexia. The Progress Engine, I believe this faction is called. Stay on your guard."

"No kidding." Mizuki drew her Fiora sword from her pack and held it at her side. "I'll follow your lead."

Azrael set off. "I need to find a workshop or armory," he explained, his voice low. "The Phyrexians are brilliant inventors and tinkerers. I've visited this plane before, you see, but only for brief scouting trips. Now, I've got a proper mission. One to prevent this all from happening to Kamigawa."

Mizuki merely nodded. The hairs on her arms and back of her neck were standing up; her every instinct was screaming at her. She kept expecting oily claws to seize her throat.

"Get down." Azrael hissed the terse command as he knelt behind a large boulder atop a hill, and Mizuki joined him. Mizuki peeked around the boulder and saw a patrol squad of cyborg humans and a golem marching along.

"Are we gonna sneak around them?" Mizuki asked.

"Yes. Wait for a good opportunity," Azrael muttered back. He pointed. "See that cluster of huts and buildings over there? I bet that's a supply depot. We must be close to the border with another faction."

Mizuki couldn't really tell the difference, but she trusted Azrael's analysis. Raiding a Phyrexian weapons cache... what an adventure.

Azrael gave the signal.

Keeping her head low, Mizuki smoothly and quickly crossed the chrome hills, taking cover behind boulders whenever she could. Meanwhile, the patrol kept on marching, their backs to Mizuki and Azrael. Good; at this rate, Mizuki and Azrael would -

The patrolling cyborgs and golem shouted something in their strange language and spread out into a defensive formation.

"Dammit!" Mizuki dove for cover behind a boulder, her body tensed, her heart racing. "Did they find us?"

Azrael stared intently in the distance. "No... someone found _them_."

"Huh?"

Mizuki dared to peek.

Loud roars and shrieks filled the air as new creatures mounted a hill and came crashing down on the blue Phyrexian patrol. What looked like two severely mutated, oversized boars gored a few cyborgs with their long, oily tusks and threw them aside. The beasts had copper plating at random spots on their skin, and metal barbs ran along their backs and on their legs. Patches of skin had apparently been torn away by an earlier battle, revealing muscle slicked with black oil.

The blue golem rammed its huge needle-arm into a boar's head and injected its blue liquid; at once, the boar went slack and collapsed, grunting in a stupor. Three blue cyborgs hurried over and extended their arms into surgical hacksaws that separated the boar's head from its body.

Mizuki's breath caught in her throat. "The Phyrexians... are fighting each _other_?"

Now a trio of copper-skinned elves with long, braided hair appeared, and their long swords cleaved through the remaining cyborg's bodies with impunity. Sickly green mana hummed between their copper plates, their eye sockets empty.

Now alone, the chrome golem snarled and swung its needle like a club. One elf was thrown aside as the needle caught it in the stomach, but the other elves, backed up by the boar, pinned down the golem and shredded it. The whole battlefield was soaked in mingled blood and black oil.

The elves barked orders to each other in the Phyrexian language, and the boar snorted and trotted off, its snout sniffing to root out any other blue Phyrexians while the elves' formation fanned out.

"Indeed, Phyrexian infighting," Azrael murmured. "Strange that the Phyrexians who lead the Kamigawa invasion are being attacked. Is this an isolated incident spurred by a rogue green Phyrexian commander... or do the green Phyrexians resent the blue ones for their success on Kamigawa? Or..." His face darkened. "Do they _object_ to the invasion for some reason? Are they trying to sabotage the Progress Engine?"

Mizuki scratched her head. "Beats me. Beings of blue mana and those of green usually don't get along, yeah, but these are _all_ Phyrexians."

"But the green Phyrexians are not joining the invasion, while the white ones are," Azrael pointed out. "Blue and white mana have a common essence. Though I doubt that these green Phyrexians are attacking the Progress Engine for primal reasons alone. No, the blue Phyrexians have done something to anger the green ones. Something recent. Probably related to the invasion."

Mizuki shook her head. "All I can say is that if those green Phyrexians had _also_ invaded Kamigawa, we'd be in even bigger trouble."

"Indeed," Azrael said, sounding distracted. "Now, what of the black-aligned Phyrexians? Where do they stand? Will they step in at the last moment and claim the bounty of the invasion for themselves? Or do they, too, oppose it?"

Mizuki patted Azrael's shoulder. "Why don't we find those weapons you wanted, and we can figure this out later?"

"Not just weapons, but sensory devices, infiltration gear, repair kits, modular parts, anything I can find," Azrael told her. "The Phyrexian factions are feuding... which means that they're developing countermeasures to each other. I could modify whatever I find, and have it work against _all_ Phyrexians. Then I take it all to Kamigawa and duplicated it with whatever spare materials Daimyo Kirinji's coalition can secure for me."

"Okay, now _that_ 's a plan," Mizuki said, hands on her hips. "While those green Phyrexians are lookin' for blue guys, why don't we get a move on?"

"Yes. Follow me." Azrael carefully stalked across the boulder-strewn hills and toward the supply depot up ahead. Mizuki stayed close to him, her short sword always held at the ready. She strained her ears for any sound of attack.

Thousands of little legs clicked across the hills.

"D'you hear that?" Mizuki hissed, and Azrael nodded. Azrael took cover behind an even bigger boulder than before, his blue-black mana aura manifested in full. His red hair and cape fluttered in the intense aura.

Then Mizuki saw them: hundreds of housecat-sized beetles, their long legs clattering over the chrome hills as they swarmed around the two trapped humans.

"Insects," Azrael said tightly. "They must have a nest nearby. Or -"

"Or _that_ ," Mizuki said grimly.

A lumbering... _thing_... crested a hill, surrounded by the copper-plated, oily beetles. Its pod-like body strode on two crooked legs, and its four arms waved everywhere, flicking droplets of oil. Several toothy mouths gasped and grinned all over its body, and every few seconds, another beetle would emerge from a mouth to join its hundreds of fellows thronging on the hills. The beast's head looked every which way, its mouth gnashing its sharp teeth.

"A mobile hive," Azrael commented. "Possibly an adaptation to guerilla attacks employed by the green Phyrexians' enemies."

Mizuki fired up her own mana aura and activated her short sword's enchantment. Red-white flames glowed in the air as Mizuki waved the sword back and forth, trying to figure out the best attack pattern. The familiar flames were only a minor comfort against the countless beetles that massed before her.

Azrael clenched his fists. "Let them come!"

*o*o*o*o*

"There had _better_ be a good reason for this," Radiah muttered to herself as she stepped forth to the massive gates before Elesh Norn's palace. She lowered her hood to reveal herself, and the two guard golems nodded and tapped the butts of their staves onto the ground. At the command, the massive portcullis slid downwards into the ground, hidden chains rattling and clanking the whole time. Then, with a final _thud_ , the gate settled into place underground.

Radiah held her staff tightly by her side as she strode angrily across the front grounds. She heard the gate clank its way back up behind her, and she didn't stop until she found herself in Elesh Norn's cavernous, well-lit throne room.

"Grand Cenobite. I am here," Radiah said, kneeling on one knee before the Praetor. Around her, porcelain-armored guards stood under the Phyrexian banners and white-flame torches, but Radiah ignored them.

From her throne, Elesh Norn delicately stood and walked down the wide steps to her minion, her red robes trailing along the marble floor. The Praetor's faceless head looked down at the kneeling planeswalker. "You are late, Radiah."

Radiah licked her lips. "I left Kamigawa with... a certain reluctance, Grand Cenobite."

"So you did." Elesh Norn's boots clicked on the floor as she paced in a wide circle around Radiah. "I would rather have you arrive sooner."

Radiah didn't know what to say.

"The balance of power has shifted sooner than expected," Elesh Norn finally said. Her red robes whispered along the marble floor. "Our conquest of Kamigawa has become fragile. Cracks may soon appear in our grip. Our minions, and those of the Progress Engine, are stretched thin. Brittle."

It wasn't like Elesh Norn to acknowledge weakness or vulnerability of any kind, Radiah thought. Then again, this whole campaign was unprecedented.

"You have done your part," Elesh Norn said. "That is, on other worlds. Now, your own needs you. Vorinclex's beasts ravage the Progress Engine's borders, and the Seven Steel Thanes and their minions corrode our own border forces. I will not have that continue."

 _I knew it,_ Radiah thought darkly. Vorinclex and Sheoldred, instead of backing down in the face of victory on Kamigawa, had increased the pressure! Those fools!

The vision of Phyrexia would grow foggy if this went on.

"I am ready to serve," Radiah said, speaking to the floor.

Elesh Norn came to a halt before Radiah. "Stand, child. I would see your face as I say this."

Radiah slowly stood and lifted her chin. Her silver-blonde hair fell in wavy locks around her face, her heart racing in her chest. Face-to-face with a Praetor... no one walked away from that unchanged.

Elesh Norn traced a porcelain claw along her jaw. "Contain your thirst for conquest, Radiah, and defend what you have claimed. You alone can prevent the heretical factions frm undoing Phyrexia's greatest leap forward. This is perhaps our _only_ chance of nirvana."

"I..." Radiah's voice caught in her throat. She nodded. "I will do no less, Grand Cenobite. The Channeler is already at work on Minamo Academy; without it, we are lost."

"Sheoldred and Vorinclex's hordes would certainly attempt to cross the portal and destroy the Channeler on Kamigawa," Elesh Norn said with distate. "The portal is _not_ to be theirs to use. Do you understand? Do not even allow them close to it. Seal the holes in my and Jin-Gitaxias' borders at once."

Radiah ground her teeth. This was the frustration of a Phyrexian life; your greatest achievements became the object of envy of schemers and heretics and freaks. No deed could occur without deadly ripples radiating from it.

Elesh Norn carefully lifted Radiah's chin with a porcelain claw. "Say it... Radiah."

Radiah swallowed. "I will lead the counter-attack. Vorinclex and Sheoldred will have nirvana forced up on them if need be."

Elesh Norn knew the implications perfectly.

The Praetor withdrew her hand and returned to her throne, placing her clawed hands on the armrests. She said nothing. That was all that needed to be spoken.

Radiah turned on her heel and stalked down the throne room to the exit. She didn't know what bothered her more; that the green and black Phyrexians violently opposed the campaign, or that she wouldn't be there to see the glorious work finish on Kamigawa.

Unless...


	24. Chapter 24

**FALL SEVEN TIMES**

 **by Ulquiorra9000**

 **Chapter 24**

It was almost entirely due to Jin-Gitaxias' elaborate and subtle spy network that Radiah had any chance to dive below New Phyrexia's surface for her little mission.

Radiah wandered the Progress Engine's territory seemingly at random, cresting hills of hexagonal chrome plates, passing under twisted rock towers, and striding alongside crooked rivers of black oil until she found an abandoned Neurok apartment. She passed through the cluttered front lobby, visited room 107, and sharply tapped the butt end of her porcelain staff on the floor.

At once, a five foot-square door slid aside to reveal rusty iron stairs leading steeply downwards.

 _Nice and slow, now._ Radiah eased her way down those steps, and as she walked, fist-sized red gems glowed to life along the walls like candles, bathing her in an eerie crimson glow. Her high-heeled boots were loud on the steps as she plunged further down, her arms wide to help maintain her balance.

At some point, the stairs leveled out into a wider cavern, one of mixed iron, nickel, and granite. Whole chandeliers of glowing red gems hung overhead, and there were bootprints everywhere.

"Who goes there?" came a voice in the guttural Phyrexian language.

From one of the many side caverns emerged a Quiet Furnace overseer, a brawny human man with iron-studded boots, a parted leather jacket, and random spikes of glowing iron on his toughened skin. He held a long staff ending with a spiked curl and a short chain. His eyes glowed red from phyresis, and those demanding eyes locked onto Radiah's.

Radiah smiled and tossed her silver-blonde hair. "Radiah Albazan, high priestess of the Machine Orthodoxy, and now ambassador of the Machine Orthodoxy-Progress Engine partnership."

She knew to wait and let this fellow work at his own pace; no one dared push the tempers of Urabrask's agents.

It paid off. "You clearly mean us no harm today," the overseer said gruffly, pointing with his staff. "You came alone; good. And finding this place takes enough planning and knowledge so you wouldn't come here lightly."

"That is certainly so."

The overseer glanced over his shoulder and barked a command. At his words, five long-headed goblins in dented, rusty armor and holding battle cleavers arrived, along with two more humans. "Ambassador Albazan is to be escorted to the boss," he told them. _"Move it!"_

The goblins jumped as though electrocuted, then gathered around Radiah, chattering excitedly and prodding her with their clawed fingers. Amused, Radiah let them lead the way.

Whoever this "boss" was, his office was really a lair that sat in a rock spire in the middle of a magma lake. The goblins and humans escorted her across a sturdy, lattice-like bridge, and around her, Radiah saw endless hordes of _compleat_ Vulshok, goblins, and repurposed myr toiling away, either repairing battle golems, forging armor, or mining precious minerals. The hot hair buffeted Radiah's silky hair and hood, and she could smell unwashed bodies, hot iron, rust, and half-melted metals and bodies everywhere. Good; she wouldn't deal with potential allies who would do any less!

Radiah ignored the barked commands of brutal-looking overseers and stepped into the boss' lair. Inside, a barrel-chested, oversized man lounged on a couch of smooth, melted cobalt, with several myr with red eyes serving him an endless stream of snacks and rare wines. The left side of his head, his right arm, and the exposed ribs on his left flank were all gleaming iron, with veins of red Phyrexian mana glowing through the skin.

"I am Radiah Albazan, a high priestess of the Machine Orthodoxy,"Radiah began. "And you?"

The man shifted on his couch, and it actually creaked under his weight. "Nalthaxria Ulgabrazin," he told her in a surprisingly tenor voice. He made a raspy chuckle. "Feel free to call me Naltha, however. Consider it a fellow officer's treat. Normally, anyone around here who mispronounces my name feels _this_."

From the floor, Naltha picked up a coiled, metal wire whip with barbs of obsidian along its length.

"Indeed," Radiah said, nodding. "Naltha, your region of the Quiet Furnace is directly underneath a battleground, one between the blue-white partnership and the foolish green and black hordes. I would have your assistance."

Naltha tossed his head back for a booming laugh. "Surface people. All the same," he said, toying with the whip between his tough fingers. A crooked grin spread across his wide face. His left eye was like an ember, one without a pupil. "You ask much of me, priestess Albazan."

"There are... resources, and secrets on the surface that you normally can't reach, due to violent border disputes," Radiah pressed him. "Many of which can be yours if you intervene on those border conflicts."

Naltha's tongue ran along his teeth. "I sense that you are on the defensive."

"A fair point," Radiah conceded. "But time is on our side. Elesh Norn and Jin-Gitaxias only need the borders secure until my mission on Kamigawa is complete. After that, we will by far have enough power, and the enlightenment, to protect ourselves."

"Hmmmmmm." Naltha shifted again, and accepted a tray of food from a clanking myr. The beak-headed creature bowed and backed away. Naltha placed a morsel in his mouth and chewed, his mismatched eyes contemplating Radiah's entire frame. And, of course, her entire request.

Finally, Naltha set the tray on the arm of his couch. "This whip of mine... it has drawn much blood. Many of its victims proceed with their jobs, and those who don't, end up in the slag piles. Do you know what that means?"

Radiah nodded. She'd heard the reports from spies. "Slow or rebellious workers are melted down for the good of the Quiet Furnace, as your praetor demands."

Naltha laughed again. "Nicely put! It's a relief to speak with someone else with brains around here." Naltha reached over and consumed another morsel. He pointed at his guest. "So you should understand what I'm saying: _whip your men into shape!_ If you have time to visit me, you've got time to force your porcelain minions back into fighting shape. Can you not ignite their inner flame?"

"The general metaphor is appreciated, Naltha, but we of the Machine Orthodoxy do not fight with fury or haste," Radiah said simply. "Rather, with conviction, and unity, and faith in our grand hierarchy. It is our nature."

Naltha rumbled deep in his throat. "I will never understand surface dwellers."

Radiah took a deep breath. _I'll have to sweeten the deal and make this metal minion hear me out._ She listed a number of assets between the Progress Engine and Machine Orthodoxy that could be his. She was allowed to give away most of them, and for the rest... well... surely Elesh Norn would appreciate the end justifying the means.

Naltha leaned forward in his couch and toyed with the whip between his fingers again. "I see! Well, should you prove yourself against the Seven Steel Thanes and the Vicious Swarm, priestess Albazan, I will certainly lend you my men to further turn the tide. But until then, _ignite their inner flame!"_

There was no getting around Naltha's desire to hear stories of the Orthodoxy's soldiers fighting in a furious frenzy. Very well. Radiah bowed her head. "Have your scouts watch us," she said, backing herself out of the room to conclude the meeting. "For the good of New Phyrexia, I will hold my end of the bargain."

"And I," Naltha told her. He didn't look away until Radiah was escorted back across the lattice bridge.

Radiah quickly calculated the new strategy in her mind. She'd have to activate certain... _assets_... to move this plan along.

*o*o*o*o*

Mizuki's ears filled with the thousand-fold click of banana-sized pincers as the thousands of beetles skittered towards her and Azrael. In seconds, the swarm had the two lone humans surrounded in a sea of oily, cyborg chitin, and the walking hive was still spitting out new minions every few seconds.

"I admit, I did not expect to be _this_ heavily outnumbered if we got into a fight," Azrael said, his voice tight with concern. "We've got to cover each other's flanks, Mizuki. Let them come."

 _Like we can do anything else!_ Mizuki thought, but Azrael's plan was sound. She stood to the taller man's back, her Fiora sword at the ready, her breath coming in shallow gasps, her heart racing.

The beetles screeched and surged forth.

"Raaaaaah!" Mizuki swung her short sword with all her might, and a whipflare of red-white mana swept through the creatures' ranks. Dozens of insects boiled away, and charred bits of chitin and random legs or pincers littered the ground. Undeterred, more beetles advanced with astonishing speed, a living tidal wave.

Nearby, Azrael swung his fists back and forth, and Mizuki watched his red-black-blue ribbons of mana eviscerate and vaporize countless beetles. Again and again Azrael lashed out, but the beetles started forming clumps that created large empty spaces on the chrome hills. The clumps roved around and evaded Azrael's blows, and once a ribbon came close to a beetle cluster, the insects scattered.

 _Whoa! These bugs adjust fast!_ Mizuki bared her teeth and pointed her sword. She fired a red-white mana helix and swept it across the battlefield, vaporizing scored more of the beetles. Panting, she whirled around and released a ball of white flame that burnt away a flanking cluster of beetles, but she already heard the horrible sound of more beetles approaching her other flank.

"I'll cover you." Azrael placed himself at Mizuki's exposed flank, knelt, and slammed his left fist onto the ground. A rolling wave of blue-black mana surged across the ground and melted the entire flanking group, and Azrael's mini-fireballs blew away another handful.

"Watch out!" This time, Mizuki covered Azrael's flank, and her mana helix blasted apart an ambush squad of beetles. But as soon as she turned around, another huge wave of them approached, and the walking hive was generating them much faster than before.

Then _another_ walking hive emerged from over a hill, thousands more beetles thronging around it.

And to Mizuki's astonishment, the new hive opened its many mouths and started spitting out beetles like grotesque arrows.

Azrael whirled around and swung his fist, enchanted with blue-black mana. His knuckles intercepted an airborne beetle, then another and another. He released a frenzy of precise blows to block the launched beetles, his red hair and blue cape whirling through the air. But it was only a distraction; now, dozens of beetles on the ground swarmed up his legs and up his chest, latching on with their spindly legs and claws.

"Azrael! Hang on!" Mizuki turned and slashed her Fiora sword through the air, releasing a wave of white mana that split into countless cords. Many of the thin cords wrapped around the beetles and tore them off of Azrael, but more kept crawling onto him.

Then Mizuki felt sharp claws dig into her legs, and she shrieked din terror as beetles swarmed up her legs and chest, weighing her down. She collapsed, curling into the fetal position as the bugs enveloped her in a mound of carapace bodies and clicking pincers.

 _No... no!_

A pulse of blue-white mana swept through her.

The beetles screeched and were flung aside, and Mizuki barely scrambled to her feet. Azrael, too, was clear and looking for the source of the new spell. Then Mizuki spotted a group of armored humans and vedalken standing atop a hill, all of them holding their arms wide, the blue-white aura radiating from their hands.

"Azrael! Hurry!" Mizuki seized Azrael's hand and sprinted toward the rescuers, and behind her, she heard the beetles and walking hives rushing forth to recapture them. However, another pulse of blue-white mana surged across the chrome hills, and when Mizuki dared a glance over her shoulder, she saw the beetles and hives falling back, struggling against the mana waves.

The newcomers motioned, and Mizuki and Azrael followed them down the hill and toward a cluster of boulders.

"In here," one of the rescuers said, a man with silver and chrome plates adorning his skin at random. He wore a helmet with lenses and microscopes in place of a visor, and he had odd tools on his belt. He pointed.

Mizuki saw a trapdoor rising from the ground, one that had blended perfectly into the ground a second earlier. A rusty, slightly vibrating platform waited in a small chamber below.

Without hesitation, Mizuki joined the rescuers in the chamber with Azrael, and once the trapdoor sealed above them, small white lights came alive on the walls and the platform lowered itself. Ten feet, twenty, fifty feet it descended until it halted in a massive underground cavern, one lit by massive crystal formations on the walls and ceiling.

Mizuki stared in awe as she stepped off the platform with Azrael. "It's... a whole town!" she breathed. "So many people down here..."

Azrael bowed his head. "Thank you for your assistance. I am Azrael, and this is my companion Mizuki. May I ask who you are?"

The rescuers broke out into weary grins and chuckles. "Who are we?" the man with the high-tech helmet said. "We're the Mirran partisans. The last hope for restoring our lost world."


	25. Chapter 25

**FALL SEVEN TIMES**

 **by Ulquiorra9000**

 **Chapter 25**

"The... partisans?" Mizuki repeated.

A man with short, coppery hair (and matching copper plates on his skin) nodded. "The united resistance to the Phyrexian infection that welled up from our world's core. We were stronger... once. Before the fall."

Azrael's brown eyes softened. "I am not unfamiliar with such a fate."

One of the women in the rescue group glanced at him. "You seem... odd. Where are you from?"

"Another world," Azrael told her. "An island nation that also fell to the Phyrexians. It nearly drove me to madness. I... used my artifice expertise in an attempt to reverse the loss of life, and nearly ruined the Multiverse in the process."

Many of the rescuers looked at him in awe and bewilderment.

"We can talk later," the man with the high-tech helmet said. "Guests, we will provider you with shelter here, but you'll have to answer a few questions for us, too. You must understand."

"Fair's fair," Mizuki said with a shrug.

Once in the cave town's perimeter, Mizuki saw that it was hardly a charming frontier settlement. She felt a chill as she caught the hollow, haunted looks in the people's eyes, or how many houses were dedicated to holding the injured and ill. On one side of town, several dead bodies were piled into a stone ring, and set ablaze. Everywhere, people coughed, moaned, or sharpened battle-worn weapons.

This was all that remained of Mirrodin's people?

"Are there other settlements like this one?" Azrael asked as the partisans led him and Mizuki to the largest structure.

"Yeah," the copper-skinned man said, "but if you're clear to visit the others, you can use our teleports to reach them. They only connect each settlement to the others, though, so don't expect to escape the Phyrexian on the surface with them."

Once inside the main building, Mizuki saw the promised teleport pad: a disk of polished steel six feet wide, ringed with glowing blue and white mana crystals, all supported in an elaborate latticework of chrome. It seemed to be shut off for the moment, while Mirran partisans went about their business planning raids or repairing weapons and armor.

"This is the settlement's headquarters," the helmeted man explained. "Our leader often visits each base's HQ to coordinate raids and other missions. In fact, we're expecting him later today. You might meet him."

Mizuki didn't get a chance to comment on that before she and Azrael were whisked into a meeting room and seated at a rectangular iron table. A tall, thin man with wispy white hair and gold pauldrons fused onto his shoulders stepped in, and he sat at the head of the table.

"I am Drenn, a lieutenant of the Mirran partisans," he explained in a strong, but smooth voice. He clenched his fists on the table's surface. "I was once of the Auriok tribe, and I haven't seen the grass of the Razor Fields in months. And now I'm told that two powerful visitors have arrived, who may restore hope to us."

Mizuki blinked. "Uh... what?"

Azrael leaned forward in his seat. "What were you told about us, Drenn?"

Drenn gave Azrael a hard look. "That you can, and _will_ , aid us, should you intend to remain in our sanctuary. Those who cannot help us are left for the Phyrexians on the surface."

 _Whoa. He doesn't mess around!_ Mizuki forced a smile. "Sure, I can fight. And Azrael here. My name's Mizuki, buy the way."

Drenn locked that hard look onto Mizuki. "You both are clearly other-worlders. Explain yourselves."

There was no hiding it. So, Mizuki and Azrael took turns explaining it all: Azrael's island nation of Ezig Natum falling to the Phyrexians, the quest for the Sphaera Vitae, Nihil's mission, the Phyrexian invasion of Kamigawa, and the struggling Kamigawa coalition under Daimyo Kirinji's leadership. And, of course, the fall of Minamo Academy, and the lingering mystery of why the Phyrexians craved that school so much.

Drenn sighed through his nose and sat back. "I am familiar with planar-walkers -"

"Planeswalkers," Mizuki blurted. She went red when Drenn glared at her.

"I have met planeswalkers before," Drenn said doggedly. "And witnessed their astonishing powers and arcane knowledge. That woman with the staff, that Koth fellow of the Hammer Tribe... and others. The Neruok and Moriok scouts tell us that another planeswalker, a man with a metal arm and cold aura, consorts with the Phyrexians to some degree. His mission is unknown."

Mizuki shared a glance with Azrael. "I didn't realize that there were other planeswalkers here," she admitted.

Azrael pursed his lips. "Me, neither. This warrants further thought."

"Let Jor Kadeen and his lieutenants, such as myself, consider the implications," Drenn said sharply. "Should you both be of service to the coalition, we will lend you our resources. But our leadership is well-established. It must be respected."

Mizuki sat up straighter. "Y-yes, sir. So, this Jor Kadeen is your boss?"

"He keeps us alive, in spirit and body," Drenn said with awe. "He wields red and white magic, and his knowledge of artifice is transcendant. Without him, we all would have become _compleat_ before now."

Azrael bowed his head. "I, too, am well-versed with artifice. I graduated with honors from my university, and I have studied metalcrafting on several worlds. Perhaps I can help you in that capacity, and learn in the process."

"Really." Drenn evaluated Azrael carefully. "The armor workshop could use you, if that's all true." He glanced at Mizuki. "And you, young Mizuki?"

"I fight, mainly," Mizuki said simply. "I'm a survivor, too. My hometown was slaughtered when a demoness attacked, and I've been through all kinds of fights with monsters and armies. And I have a pretty great sword, too."

"I see. There's a place in our raid parties for you, if that's true," Drenn said with a nod. "Very well! Azrael, let us test your capabilities."

"If you wish." Azrael stood and tossed his red hair. "But I request that Mizuki join us."

"Why?" Drenn demanded.

"So I may outfit her with any equipment that I forge," Azrael said. "I will aid the partisans, to be sure, but Mizuki and I are sworn travel companions. Our quest against the Phyrexians goes beyond even your struggles here on New Phyrexia. And we may soon have the aid of other planeswalkers as well."

"Very well, very well," Drenn said impatiently. "Let us go, then!"

*o*o*o*o*

Azrael wasn't kidding; Mizuki watched in awe, later in the workshop, as Azrael combed his way through the many half-built prototypes and damaged constructs in the large armory. Other partisans cleared the way as Azrael ran his hands over the machines, his nose close to the metal, muttering to himself the whole time. Blue and black mana hummed on his fingertips as he went.

"Your friend is remarkable," an Auriok woman said fondly to Mizuki, standing nearby as Azrael worked.

"Yeah, he's pretty smart," Mizuki commented as Azrael obsessively ran his fingers on a battlesuit's horned helmet.

"We don't have enough men like _him_ in our ranks," the woman sighed.

Mizuki gave her a funny look. "Hands off, lady."

The woman shyly glanced away.

At any rate, Azrael soon scoped out the entire workshop's worth of supplies, then turned to face Drenn. "I sense anti-Phyrexian enchantments hammered into the metal," he said, "and concentrated mana in reserve tanks in the higher-quality suits. A full-body vein-administered defense matrix?"

Mizuki didn't know what the hell that meant, but Drenn nodded. "Exactly," he said. "You have seen such technology before?"

"The people of Ezig Natum, my home, had developed it," Azrael explained. "And an aether-based analogue exists on Kaladesh."

Mizuki couldn't help it. "What kinda armor is that?"

With Drenn's permission, Azrael opened up the chest plating on a polished battlesuit. He pointed at the innards. "See this, Mizuki? A tank of anti-Phyrexian mana, sealed with hypo-ether valves and pumps attached to the tank's outer surface."

"Sorry, I don't talk tech."

"It's like a person's cardiovascular system," Azrael explained rapidly. "The tank is the heart. When worn, the suit will spread its mana through thin tubes from head to toe, infusing the whole suit with that anti-Phyrexian power. It greatly strengthens the wearer, and protects them from phyresis and most physical and arcane attacks."

Mizuki stared. "Whoa. We could use _that_ on Kamigawa!"

"You are _not_ taking that suit off-world!" Drenn roared. "Do you realize how precious few we have?"

Mizuki winced. "Sorry. I just meant -"

"Be calm, everyone," Azrael said. "I can replicate this."

Drenn stared. "You what? Not even our best team of artificers -"

"Went to my university," Azrael cut in. "I can improvise the parts for another battlesuit like this, or perhaps _two_ copies. I will need resources. Drenn, this workshop seems a bit low on parts... perhaps you could send a team to obtain more?"

Mizuki stepped forward. "If it means makin' an anti-Phyrexian armor suit, I'll go. Let me help."

Drenn collected himself. "Y-yes, of course. I will prepare a raid party, and we will raid the Progress Engine's outposts as soon as we can. Azrael... thank you."

Azrael fondly ran his hands down the high-tech battlesuit's surface. "No, thank _you_."

*o*o*o*o*

Zoira coughed and clapped a hand over her mouth once she made landfall on Kamigawa.

Well, this was _once_ Kamigawa, but the twisted hellscape around her was _not_ the land of samurai, nature monks, and venerated spirits. The reddish sun glowed bloodily through gaps in the twisting, purple-gray clouds overhead, and jagged bolts of purple lightning kept flashing on the horizon. The very air was thick with phyresis, denser than normal.

Zoira's eyes watered. _I shudder to think what the locals have to endure_. She stood up straight, her survival belt clanking on her waist. She stepped forward, and her leather survival boots squished in the oil-soaked dirt. She winced.

Just to be sure, Zoira raised her arm and, in a wreath of red mana, conjured her phoenix. The bird perched itself on Zoira's hand, blinking. It cooed a hello.

"Can you believe it?" the elf said sadly. "Look at this place. It was once so beautiful."

The phoenix cooed again.

"Now I've gotta find Azrael and Mizuki," Zoira told the phoenix. "Think you can help me?"

The phoenix's talons dug into Zoira's skin as it took flight, its brilliant flaming wings a welcome sight in the oppressive gloom of Kamigawa's landscape. It glided on ahead, its powerful eyesight scoping out the ruined hellscape for its master's friends.

Zoira trekked across the oil-soaked hills, noting the withered trees and flowers, and the oil-generating machines that had been implanted at regular intervals. Not another living thing stirred, but Zoira was sure that when she _did_ get company, it would be the Phyrexian kind.

 _I just left a ruined world,_ Zoira thought, recalling Zendikar's warped and dusty remains. _I'm too late to save this one, either. But I can be here for the Planeswalker's Code. Mizuki... Azrael... I hope you both have a good plan to share with me!_


End file.
